Stabilization of a superfluorescent fiber source with high performance erbium doped fibers

A high stability superfluorescent fiber source with mean-wavelength stability of 1.3 ppm/°C over a temperature range of 100 °C is proposed based on spectral shaping combined with a thermal management unit. A thermal tunable filter combined with an unpumped filtering erbium-doped fiber is used as the single-pass backward filter. Theoretical model of the filtering fiber’s temperature dependent gain spectra is presented which decides the filter’s central-wavelength with minimum thermal sensitivity for a specific temperature change. Power efficiency and spectral bandwidth of the superfluorescent fiber source are optimized based on three different erbium-doped fibers at room temperature.