Proton irradiation response of hole-assisted carbon coated erbium-doped fiber amplifiers

We investigated the behavior of a new class of erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) when exposed to 63 MeV protons. The EDFA is designed with a radiation hardened hole-assisted carbon coated (HACC) Er³⁺-doped optical fiber. The particular structure of this HACC fiber allows to permanently incorporate an optimal amount of or gases into its core, reducing its radiation sensitivity without degrading the EDFA performances. Irradiations up to a fluence of 7.5*10¹¹ p/cm² confirm the excellent tolerance of this HACC-EDFA component. It exhibits a limited decrease of ≅0.6 dB of its ≅27 dB gain for this fluence corresponding to an ionization dose of 100 krad(Si). Such a device can then survive to the radiative environments associated with both today,s space missions and future more challenging applications. (authors)