Spectroscopic properties of Er3+-doped fluorotellurite glasses containing various modifiers

Abstract We have investigated the optical and spectroscopic properties of new Er 3+ -doped fluorotellurite glasses with the basic molar composition 75%TeO 2 -10%P 2 O 5 -10%ZnO-5%PbF 2 , modified by replacing 5%TeO 2 by four various metal oxides, namely MgO, PbO, SrO and CdO. The ellipsometric data have provided a Sellmeier-type dispersion relation of the refractive index of the investigated glasses. The optical absorption edge has been described within the Urbach approach, while the absorption and fluorescence spectra have been analyzed in terms of the standard Judd–Ofelt theory along with the photoluminescence decay of the 4 I 13/2 and 4 S 3/2 levels of the Er 3+ ion. The absorption and emission spectra of the 4 I 15/2 ↔ 4 I 13/2 infrared transition have been analyzed within the McCumber theory to yield the peak emission cross-section and figure of merit (FOM) for the amplifier gain. It appears that the glass containing MgO as a modifier is characterized by the largest FOM suggesting that the fluorotellurite matrix with this oxide can be a good novel host for Er 3+ ion doping. Finally, we propose a new simple method to calculate the mean transition energy of the McCumber approach as the arithmetic average of the barycenter wavenumbers of absorption and emission spectra.