Superfluorescent single mode Nd

Miniature broadband optical sources are desirable in fiber optic gyroscopes. The commonly used sources at present are superluminiscent laser diodes (SLD). However, these sources generally fail to satisfy the wavelength stability requirement, as their emission wavelength is very sensitive to temperature and optical feedback. In addition, they incur high coupling loss into single-mode fiber, yielding typically a few hundreds of μW of usable power. Recently, neodymium-doped silica single-mode fiber emerged as another potential miniature fluorescent source. The potential of such a source was investigated theoretically. In principle it can provide significant output of 1060 nm emission when optically end-pumped hard enough to be in the simulated emission regime. In this paper the authors report high power operation (>10mW) of a fiber superluminescent source and discuss its wavelength stability