An optical fiber amplification. system includes: a first optical fiber amplifier including a first optical amplifying fiber including a core portion doped with a first rare-earth. element, a first input unit configured to receive first signal light, an excitation-light source configured to output pump light, a pump light combiner configured to input the pump light to the first optical amplifying fiber, and a residual pump light recovery device configured to recover residual pump light; and a second optical fiber amplifier including a second optical amplifying fiber including a core portion doped with a second rare-earth. element, a second input unit configured to receive second signal light, and a residual pump light combiner configured to input, to the second optical amplifying fiber, the residual pump light recovered by the residual pump light recovery device.

An optical fiber amplification. system includes: a first optical fiber amplifier including a first optical amplifying fiber including a core portion doped with a first rare-earth. element, a first input unit configured to receive first signal light, an excitation-light source configured to output pump light, a pump light combiner configured to input the pump light to the first optical amplifying fiber, and a residual pump light recovery device configured to recover residual pump light; and a second optical fiber amplifier including a second optical amplifying fiber including a core portion doped with a second rare-earth. element, a second input unit configured to receive second signal light, and a residual pump light combiner configured to input, to the second optical amplifying fiber, the residual pump light recovered by the residual pump light recovery device.

An optical fiber connector includes: amplifying fibers in which an active element activated by excitation light is added to a core of each of the amplifying fibers. The amplifying fibers are connected together such that an absorption amount of excitation light per unit length increases with an increase of a distance from an incident end of the excitation light. A mode field diameter of laser light propagating through the core is same among the amplifying fibers.

An optical fiber connector includes: amplifying fibers in which an active element activated by excitation light is added to a core of each of the amplifying fibers. The amplifying fibers are connected together such that an absorption amount of excitation light per unit length increases with an increase of a distance from an incident end of the excitation light. A mode field diameter of laser light propagating through the core is same among the amplifying fibers.

An optical amplifying fiber includes: at least one single core portion doped with a rare-earth element; an inner cladding portion configured to enclose the at least one core portion, the inner cladding portion having a lower refractive index than maximum refractive index of each core portion; and an outer cladding portion configured to enclose the inner cladding portion, the outer cladding portion having a lower refractive index than refractive index of the inner cladding portion, wherein the inner cladding portion includes a plurality of air bubbles.

An optical amplifying fiber includes: at least one single core portion doped with a rare-earth element; an inner cladding portion configured to enclose the at least one core portion, the inner cladding portion having a lower refractive index than maximum refractive index of each core portion; and an outer cladding portion configured to enclose the inner cladding portion, the outer cladding portion having a lower refractive index than refractive index of the inner cladding portion, wherein the inner cladding portion includes a plurality of air bubbles.

A high-efficiency laser pumping device is provided, wherein a dielectric with or without a tapered aperture is used to accept, guide, and concentrate a pump light toward a laser gain material. Preferably, the dielectric is also a heat insulator between the pump-light source and the laser gain material. The pump-light source includes an array of light-emitting diodes, or an array of laser diodes, or an array of mixed light-emitting-diodes and laser diodes. Preferably, the input and output faces of the dielectric are optically coated with dielectric layers to maximize the pump brightness toward the laser gain material. A high-efficiency laser-pumping system with active cooling apparatus is further provided, wherein a plural number of the optical-guiding and thermal-insulation dielectrics are arranged to receive the pump lights from a plural number of pump-light sources, configured to concentrate all the pump light toward a laser gain material.

A device for the generation of ultrashort pulses, wherein an oscillator is formed by: a first and a second non-overlapping transmission band-pass filter, which can serve as reflecting end element of the oscillator; optically transparent means with non-linear Kerr coefficient χ.sup.(3) different from zero configured to achieve a spectral broadening by self-phase modulation of the signal transiting through these means; an optical waveguide that produces a positive gain; a node configured to receive a trigger signal designed to activate the operation of the oscillator; a trigger signal generating device comprising: a laser source, for example a microchip, configured to generate a laser pulse, preferably with a minimum bandwidth, having a duration of hundreds of ps, up to the ns; a coupling system designed to introduce the pulse of the trigger laser into a waveguide made of an optically transparent material characterised by a non-linear Kerr coefficient χ.sup.(3) different from zero, which is configured to produce two distinct effects in order to spectrally broaden the pulse of the trigger laser, and precisely: a) self-phase modulation four-wave mixing; the output of the waveguide supplies the trigger signal to the node. The pulses produced by the oscillator typically have a duration of the order of the picosecond and are easily reduced to the Fourier limit of circa 100 femtoseconds by means of a dispersive device.

In some implementations, a device may apply a modulation to an electrical current to derive a modulated electrical current. The device may supply the modulated electrical current to an optical pump source for an optical amplifier to cause the optical pump source to emit light based on the modulated electrical current. The device may generate a signal based on an optical power of the light emitted by the optical pump source. The device may filter the signal with respect to a feedback signal that is to result from the modulated electrical current to derive a filtered signal. The device may process the filtered signal to identify whether the feedback signal is present in the filtered signal based on a power indicated by the filtered signal. Whether the feedback signal is present indicates a state of the optical pump source.

Disclosed herein are methods and systems for automatically configuring a raman amplifier. One exemplary system may be provided with the raman amplifier, a user device, and a network administration device. A processor of the network administration device executes instructions that cause the network administration device to generate a machine learning model using machine learning techniques and deploy the machine learning model to a controller of the raman amplifier. When a desired gain profile is communicated from the user device to the controller of the raman amplifier, instructions stored in non-transitory computer readable memory cause a processor of the controller to automatically assess the desired gain profile using the machine learning model to determine raman pump configurations for each of a plurality of raman pumps of the raman amplifier and send the determined raman pump configurations to each of the plurality of raman pumps of the raman amplifier.