STABILITY COMPENSATED BROADBAND SOURCE

摘要

The present invention discloses a thermally stable rareearth doped fiber source (100) comprising an active medium (110) such as Erbium or Neodymium. The thermal stability of the mean wavelength of such a source (100) is determined by three contributions as expressed by the following differential equation: The first term is the intrinsic temperature dependence of the active medium (110), the second term is the pump power dependence and the third term is a contribution that arises from the dependence of the emission wavelength on the pump wavelength. The method of the present invention minimizes the temperature dependence of the mean wavelength by using the above equation and optimizing the values of the pump power and the pump wavelength so that the three contributions in the governing equation cancel each other.