Abstract
The impact of thermo-optic refractive-index changes arising from the core heat load in a dual-core fiber amplifier is studied through finite-element-based numerical simulations. Trends in coupling lengths, effective area, core overlaps of fundamental and higher-order supermodes, effects of asymmetric heat loads, and thermo-optic mode coupling parameters are quantified. It is concluded that the coupling between cores is only moderately altered by the overall heat load, but can be strongly sensitive to asymmetric loads. The influence of the core coupling strength is demonstrated to be very important on the supermode effective area, besides the shrinking due to thermal effects. While the thermo-optic index perturbations can lead to guidance of higher-order supermodes, it seems realistic to maintain single-mode operation through gain suppression of the higher-order modes. On the other hand, thermo-optic couplings between fundamental supermodes are found to be quite strong.
© 2018 IEEE
PDF Article
More Like This
Cited By
You do not have subscription access to this journal. Cited by links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an Optica member, or as an authorized user of your institution.
Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Login to access Optica Member Subscription