International audienceA comprehensive numerical model of a thulium-doped silica-based fibre amplifiers is presented. The model is spectrally and spatially resolved and is general in terms of pumping scheme used. The application of the model for predicting the S-band amplifier performance and for optimization of amplifier parameters is shown. For optimized Tm-doped fibre with 3 H4 level lifetime of 45 ls, which is the maximum value in the Tm-doped silica fibres prepared by the authors, above 20 dB of gain with 2000 mW pump power at the 1050 nm pump band can be expected according to the simulations

Rare earth (RE)-doped silica-based optical fibers with transparent glass ceramic (TGC) core was fabricated through the well-known modified chemical vapor deposition (MCVD) process without going through the commonly used stage of postceramming. The main characteristics of the RE-doped oxide nanoparticles namely, their density and mean diameter in the fibers are dictated by the concentration of alkaline-earth element used as phase-separating agent. Magnesium and erbium co-doped fibers were fabricated. Optical transmission in term of loss due to scattering as well as some spectroscopic characteristics of the erbium ions was studied. For low Mg content, nano-scale particles could be grown with and relatively low scattering losses were obtained, whereas large Mg-content causes the growth of larger particles resulting in much higher loss. However, in the latter case, certain interesting alteration of the spectroscopic properties of the erbium ions were observed. These initial studies should be useful in incorporating new doped materials to realize active optical fibers for constructing lasers and amplifiers.

We propose a setup for multiplexed distributed optical fiber sensors capable of resolving temperature distribution in thermo-therapies, with a spatial resolution of 2.5 mm over multiple fibers interrogated simultaneously. The setup is based on optical backscatter reflectometry (OBR) applied to optical fibers having backscattered power significantly larger than standard fibers (36.5 dB), obtained through MgO doping. The setup is based on a scattering-level multiplexing, which allows interrogating all the sensing fibers simultaneously, thanks to the fact that the backscattered power can be unambiguously associated to each fiber. The setup has been validated for the planar measurement of temperature profiles in ex vivo radiofrequency ablation, obtaining the measurement of temperature over a surface of 96 total points (4 fibers, 8 sensing points per cm 2). The spatial resolution obtained for the planar measurement allows extending distributed sensing to surface, or even three-dimensional, geometries performing temperature sensing in the tissue with millimeter resolution in multiple dimensions.