Effect of BaF₂ and Y₂O₃ on the Raman scattering characteristics of fluorotellurite glasses

Abstract

In this letter, we investigated the Raman scattering characteristics of a series of aTeO2-(90-a)BaF2-10Y2O3 (a = 85, 80, 75, 70, 65, 60, 55 mol%), bTeO2-(95-b)BaF2-5Y2O3 (b = 90, 85, 80, 75, 70, 65, 60, 55, 50 mol%) and cTeO2-(100-c)BaF2 (c = 95, 90, 85, 80, 75, 70, 65, 60 mol%) fluorotellurite glasses. With increasing the concentration of BaF2, the peak Raman gain coefficient at 785 cm−1 increased while the Raman gain bandwidth (full spectral width at half maximum of the Raman peaks around 785 cm−1) decreased, which was attributed to the increasing proportion of non-bridge oxygen bonds in the fluorotellurite glass systems. The same results were also observed for the case of the increasing of the concentration of Y2O3. In these samples, the 50TeO2-40BaF2-10Y2O3 glass has the largest Raman gain coefficient of 29.9 × 10−13 m/W, and the 95TeO2-5BaF2 glass has the widest Raman gain bandwidth of 7.35 THz for the pumping laser at 633 nm. Furthermore, the first-order Raman Stokes light peaked at ∼2373 nm was obtained by using fluorotellurite fiber based on the above glasses as Raman gain medium and a 2000nm picoseconds laser as pump light. Our results provide guidance for further improving the performance of Raman fiber lasers or amplifiers based on fluorotellurite fibers.