Active photonic devices

Abstract

The chapter is devoted to active photonic devices fabricated by fs-laser writing. After a brief introduction focused on the role played by fs-laser written active devices, Sect. 10.2 briefly reviews the spectroscopical properties of the most interesting active ions so far exploited, namely erbium, ytterbium, neodimium, and bismuth. In Sect. 10.3 the main figures of merit for an active waveguide, namely the internal gain, the insertion loss, the net gain, and the noise figure are introduced and the experimental procedure for accurate gain measurement is also detailed. A thorough review of the active photonic devices demonstrated with the femtosecond laser microfabrication technique is presented in Sects. 10.4, 10.5, and 10.6, where several active waveguides and amplifiers, prototypal lasers, as well as more functionalized laser devices (operating under single longitudinal mode or stable mode-locking regime) are illustrated, respectively. Finally, conclusions and future perspectives of femtosecond-laser micromachining of active photonic devices are provided.