How do traces of thulium explain photodarkening in Yb doped fibers?

Ytterbium doped fiber lasers are known to be impacted by the creation of color centers during lasing so called photodarkening. This defect creation was investigated in a spectroscopic point of view, showing the presence of thulium traces (ppb) in the ytterbium doped fiber. Moreover, this contamination exhibit luminescence in the UV range under 976 nm excitation of the ytterbium-doped fiber. In adding more thulium to an ytterbium-doped fiber it was shown that thulium strongly impact the defects creation process, involved in photodarkening.

Evidence of two erbium sites in standard aluminosilicate glass for EDFA.

Site distributions of Er(3+)-doped aluminosilicate preforms of standard EDFA were studied by the low temperature Resonant Fluorescence Line Narrowing (RFLN) spectroscopy. Two erbium concentration samples with the same glass base were investigated. At very low erbium concentration, two classes of sites were identified, related to the number of AlO(6) octahedral linked by two oxygen edge-sharing to Er(3+) in the coordination sphere. As erbium concentration is increased, the high AlO(6) coordinated class of sites is smeared out by the optical response of the one AlO(6) coordinated class of sites.

How nanoparticles encapsulating fluorophores allow a double detection of biomolecules by localized surface plasmon resonance and luminescence.

The paper shows how polysiloxane particles encapsulating fluorophores can be successfully used to detect biotin-streptavidin binding by two types of technique. After functionalization of the particles by streptavidin, the fixation of the biomolecule can indeed be detected by a shift of the localized surface plasmon resonance of the biotinylated gold dots used as substrate and by the luminescence of the fluorophores evidenced by scanning near-field optical microscopy. The development of particles allowing such a double detection opens a route for increasing the reliability of biological detection and for multi-labelling strategies crossing both detection principles.

Exceptionally narrow homogeneous linewidth in erbium-doped glasses.

We show that rare-earth (RE-) doped glasses can have homogeneous linewidths as narrow as 287 kHz at (4)He temperatures. This is far narrower than others reported in glasses in the same temperature range and is suitable for precise spectral hole burning and spatial-spectral holographic applications. It is known that cw spectral hole burning linewidth measurements of RE ions in glasses are hindered by the presence of spectral diffusion but, even in glasses, application of a magnetic field can freeze out RE spin-spin interactions responsible for spectral diffusion and isolate the remaining contribution of two-level systems (TLSs). The Er(3+):2G2S glasses have unusually low TLS contributions, making it possible to study the real homogeneous linewidth using photon echo measurements. The contribution from TLSs is only 170 T(1.3) kHz when subjected to a field of 5 T.

Fluorescence imaging of submicrometric lattices of colour centres in LiF by an apertureless scanning near-field optical microscope.

We report fluorescence imaging of colour centres in Lithium Fluoride (LiF) using an apertureless Scanning Near Field Optical Microscope (SNOM). The sample consists of periodically spaced submicrometric coloured areas F2 laser-active colour centres produced by low-energy electron beam lithography on the surface of a LiF thin film. A silicon Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) tip is used as an apertureless optical probe. AFM images show a uniform surface roughness with a RMS of 7.2 nm. The SNOM images of the red fluorescence of colour centres excited at lambda = 458 nm with an argon ion laser show that the local photon emission is unambiguously related to the coloured areas and that topographic artefacts can be excluded.

Second-harmonic generation in He+-implanted gadolinium calcium oxoborate planar waveguides.

What is believed to be the first investigation of second-harmonic generation (SHG) in Ca(4)GdO (BO(3))(3) waveguides is reported. A planar waveguide was formed by 2-MeV-helium implantation. We cut the sample to achieve type I noncritical phase matching of an 823-nm fundamental wave for fundamental light propagating along the y axis and polarized along the z crystallophysic axis of the crystal. SHG was achieved with a relatively low pumping power of a cw Ti:sapphire laser. The results indicate that the nonlinearity of the material remains in the guiding region after ion implantation.