Abstract

Interactions between excited erbium ions is believed to be the major cause of inefficiency of high concentration erbium doped fibers and planar waveguides. The energy of one excited ion is transferred to a neighboring ion which is upconverted to a higher lying state, while the first ion relaxes to the ground state. The upconverted ion decays non-radiatively, and the net effect of the process is to transfer one excitation unit into heat.

© 1994 Optical Society of America