Tutorials and Case Studies
RP Photonics proudly offers a huge amount of high-quality scientific and technological content to the public. Its RP Photonics Encyclopedia is famous, but we also offer very useful tutorials and case studies.
Tutorials
In the following, we offer some comprehensive physics-based tutorials, from which you can learn a lot. While each encyclopedia article targets a specific article keyword, a tutorial introduces readers to a certain subject area related to a larger number of encyclopedia articles. It often also discusses issues of practical importance.
Dr. Paschotta has authored these three popular SPIE Field Guides. Click on the images!
Passive Fiber Optics
This is a comprehensive introduction to fiber optics, focusing on passive (non-amplifying) fibers. It explains basic principles as well as practical aspects.
#fibers#pulses
Fiber Amplifiers
You can learn about rare earth ions, how to calculate optical powers and ionic excitations in amplifiers, and on many other topics: ASE, forward vs. backward pumping, double-clad fibers, amplification of light pulses, amplifier noise, and multi-stage amplifiers.
#fibers#amplifiers#pulses
Modeling and Simulation of Fiber Amplifiers and Lasers
This is an physics-based introduction into the modeling of fiber amplifiers and fiber lasers, as required for efficient research and development. Many aspects of amplifier and laser operation can be simulated, leading to a solid quantitative understanding.
#fibers#amplifiers#pulses
Modeling of Pulse Amplification
This tutorial explains the amplification of light pulses, with particular focus on fiber amplifiers, but also some content on bulk laser amplifiers.
#fibers#amplifiers#pulses
Case Studies
Our case studies nicely complement the tutorials and encyclopedia articles. Each one provides a quantitative analysis of a concrete case of practical importance. Dive into these studies to improve your understanding of the physics and technology background and of suitable methods to investigate such things. You may also get inspired for further work.
You may deselect some topics to more easily find what is of interest to you:
| modes | dispersion | telecom | amplifiers |
| lasers | ASE | pulses | video |
Mode Structure of a Multimode Fiber
We explore various properties of guided modes of multimode fibers. We also test how the mode structure of such a fiber reacts to certain changes in the index profile, e.g. to smoothing of the index step.
#modes
Number of Modes of a Highly Multimode Fiber
We seek a simple equation for estimating for the number of modes of a highly multimode fiber, which can be applied to fiber designs with arbitrary shapes of the refractive index profile. Instead of applying complicated mathematics, we build a hypothesis and subject that to multiple numerical tests.
#modes
The Numerical Aperture of a Fiber: a Strict Limit for the Acceptance Angle?
The requirement of total internal reflection would seem to set a strict limit for the angular distributions of fiber modes. However, some modes are found to exceed that limit significantly. We investigate that in detail for single-mode, few-mode and multimode fibers.
#modes#video
Dispersion Engineering for Telecom Fibers
We explore different ways of optimizing refractive index profile for specific chromatic dispersion properties of telecom fibers, resulting in dispersion-shifted or dispersion-flattened fibers. This also involves automatic optimizations.
#modes#dispersion#telecom#video
Telecom Fiber With Parabolic Index Profile
We investigate how intermodal dispersion of a multimode fiber can be minimized with a parabolic doping profile.
#modes#telecom
Erbium-doped Fiber Amplifier for a Long-wavelength Signal
Amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) turns out to be a limiting factor, requiring a dual-stage amplifier design.
#amplifiers#ASE#telecom#video
Erbium-doped Fiber Amplifier for Rectangular Nanosecond Pulses
We deal with deformations of the pulse shape due to gain saturation. These can be minimized by pre-distorting the input pulses.
#amplifiers#pulses#video
Erbium-doped Fiber Amplifier for Multiple Signals
We optimize an amplifier for equal output powers of signals spanning a substantial wavelength range. There is a trade-off between power efficiency and noise performance.
#amplifiers#telecom
ASE in Ytterbium-doped Fibers
We study various aspects of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) in ytterbium-doped fibers — for example, why it is different in forward and backward directions, how the fiber length can have a crucial impact, and how the fiber core diameter matters.
#amplifiers#ASE