Propagation characteristics of fast light in an erbium-doped fiber amplifier

Abstract

A perturbation method is used to study the interactions among the signal power, pump power, and metastable population density for fast light in an erbium-doped fiber amplifier. The impact of temporal pump depletion (TPD) on fast light is investigated in which TPD is the response of the pump power to the temporal variation of the metastable population density. It is found that the gain coefficient and the absolute value of the negative group velocity are overestimated without considering the TPD. The effects of high-order dispersions on fast light are also shown. (C) 2008 Optical Society of America.