Numerical study on adiabatic compression of ultrashort fundamental solitons in an erbium-doped fiber amplifier

In this paper, the compression and amplification of fundamental solitons in an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) are investigated by using the numerical method. The results show that the unchirped fundamental solitons can be compressed and amplified by selecting an appropriate length of the EDFA when the peak gain of the EDFA is fixed, and the compression and amplification satisfy the adiabatic condition. Furthermore, the fundamental solitons with appropriate positive chirp parameters can be compressed and amplified effectively by selecting an appropriate length of the EDFA, but the pulse compression cannot satisfy the adiabatic condition. Moreover, the compression of the fundamental solitons with negative chirp also cannot satisfy the adiabatic condition, and the compression effects are very poor. Thus, the chirp should be reduced before adiabatic compression using the EDFA. (C) 2007 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.