An active optical fibre, including: a core; an inner cladding substantially surrounding the core, whereby the core and the inner cladding form an area configured to propagate pump radiation; an outer cladding comprised of at least a third material with at least a third refractive index substantially surrounding the inner cladding, the third refractive index being smaller than the second refractive index, whereby the outer cladding confines pump radiation to the core and the inner cladding; and a coating comprised of a thermally conductive material substantially surrounding the outer cladding, wherein the inner cladding is configured to reduce impact of spatial hole-burning on absorption of the pump radiation as the pump radiation propagates through the active optical fibre, and wherein the thermally conductive material of the coating supports a reduced temperature increase between the area and an outer surface of the coating.

A rare earth-doped double-clad optical fiber includes a rare earth ion-doped fiber core, an inner cladding layer, and an outer cladding layer. A cross section of the inner cladding layer is a non-circular plane including at least two arcuate notches. According to the provided optical fiber, optical processing can be performed on a preform without changing a preform preparation process and a drawing process. The inner cladding is designed to have a non-circular planar structure having a cross section with at least two arcuate notches. While maintaining the same light absorption efficiency of pump light within the cladding layer, a preform polishing process is simplified, a risk of cracking the preform during polishing of multiple surfaces and a risk of contamination of the preform caused by impurities are reduced, wire drawing control precision is better, and comprehensive performance of the optical fiber is improved.

The disclosed fluorophosphate glasses for an active device include: a metaphosphate composition including Al(PO.sub.3).sub.3; a fluoride composition including BaF.sub.2 and SrF.sub.2; and a dopant composed of ErF.sub.3 and YbF.sub.3, and have thermal and mechanical properties to be able to be used as a glass base material for an active device (e.g., optical fiber laser), have a high emission cross-section characteristic, have a reinforced upconversion and downconversion emission characteristic, and have high sensitivity S in a cryogenic environment.

The present application provides a process of fabrication of erbium and ytterbium-co-doped multielements silica glass based cladding-pumped fiber for use as a highly efficient high power optical amplifier.

A method for producing rare earth metal-doped quartz glass includes the steps of (a) providing a blank of the rare earth metal-doped quartz glass, and (b) homogenizing the blank by softening the blank zone by zone in a heating zone and by twisting the softened zone along a rotation axis. Some rare earth metals, however, show a discoloration of the quartz glass, which hints at an unforeseeable and undesired change in the chemical composition or possibly at an inhomogeneous distribution of the dopants. To avoid this drawback and to provide a modified method which ensures the production of rare earth metal-doped quartz glass with reproducible properties, during homogenization according to method step (b), the blank is softened under the action of an oxidizingly acting or a neutral plasma.

A radiation-resistant laser optical fiber preform core rod at least includes one type of activated ion (Yb.sup.3+, Er.sup.3+) and one or more types of co-doped ion (Al.sup.3+, P.sup.5+, Ge.sup.4+, Ce.sup.3+, F.sup.?), and OD group of 16-118 ppm. Irradiation resistance of core rod glass can be effectively improved by sequentially performing pre-treatments, i.e. deuterium loading, pre-irradiation and thermal annealing on a preform core rod. Electron paramagnetic resonance test shows that, under the same radiation condition, the radiation induced color center concentration in a preform core rod treated by the method above is lower than in an untreated core rod by one or more orders of magnitude. The obtained core rod can be used for preparing a radiation-resistant rare earth-doped silica fiber, and has the advantages of high laser slope efficiency, low background loss, being able to be used stably in a vacuum environment for a long time, for example.

An optical glass with high refractive index and low dispersion, having refractive index nd of 1.78-1.95, Abbe number d of 32-50, and contains no GeO.sub.2, so it is not easily devitrified. An optical glass, represented by cation %, including: 1-20% of Si.sup.4+; 25-60% of B.sup.3+; 10-40% of La.sup.3+; 0-15% of Y.sup.3+; 0-20% of Nb.sup.5+; 0-15% of Ti.sup.4+; 0-10% of Ta.sup.5+; 0-5% of W.sup.6+; 0-15% of Zr.sup.4+; 0-10% of Zn.sup.2+; 0-10% of Bi.sup.3+. An optical glass with excellent transmittance, an optical glass preform and an optical element formed by the above optical glass. The optical element made by the above optical glass and the above glass preform or optical element blank, such as lens, can be used for optical systems.

A system and method for sintering a thin, high purity fused silica glass sheet having a thickness of 500 m or less, includes a step of rastering a beam of a laser across a sheet of high purity fused silica soot; wherein a pattern of the rastering includes tightly spacing target locations on the sheet such that the laser sinters the soot and simultaneously forms tiny notches on a first major surface of the sheet when viewed in cross-section, wherein the tiny notches are crenellated such that at least some of the notches have generally flat bottom surfaces and at least some respective adjoining caps have generally plateau top surfaces offset from the bottom surfaces by steeply-angled sidewalls.

An active optical fibre, including: a core; an inner cladding substantially surrounding the core, whereby the core and the inner cladding form an area configured to propagate pump radiation; an outer cladding comprised of at least a third material with at least a third refractive index substantially surrounding the inner cladding, the third refractive index being smaller than the second refractive index, whereby the outer cladding confines pump radiation to the core and the inner cladding; and a coating comprised of a thermally conductive material substantially surrounding the outer cladding, wherein the inner cladding is configured to reduce impact of spatial hole-burning on absorption of the pump radiation as the pump radiation propagates through the active optical fibre, and wherein the thermally conductive material of the coating supports a reduced temperature increase between the area and an outer surface of the coating.

An optical glass with high refractive index and low dispersion, having refractive index nd of 1.78-1.95, Abbe number vd of 32-50, and contains no GeO.sub.2, so it is not easily devitrified. An optical glass, represented by cation %, including: 1-20% of Si.sup.4+; 25-60% of B.sup.3+; 10-40% of La.sup.3+; 0-15% of Y.sup.3+; 0-20% of Nb.sup.5+; 0-15% of Ti.sup.4+; 0-10% of Ta.sup.5+; 0-5% of W.sup.6+; 0-15% of Zr.sup.4+; 0-10% of Zn.sup.2+; 0-10% of Bi.sup.3+. An optical glass with excellent transmittance, an optical glass preform and an optical element formed by the above optical glass. The optical element made by the above optical glass and the above glass preform or optical element blank, such as lens, can be used for optical systems.