Gain and gain-flatness improved photonic crystal fiber Raman amplifier based on a dual-pass amplification configuration with single pump laser

A gain and gain-flatness improved L-band dual-pass Raman fiber amplifier (RFA) utilizing a photonic crystal fiber (PCF) as gain medium is demonstrated. By introducing complementary gain spectra of typical forward and backward pumping single-pass RFA using the same PCF, we finally achieve average net gain level of 22.5 dB with a ±0.8 dB flattening gain in 20-nm bandwidth from 1595 nm to 1615 nm, which is rare in RFAs with only one single pump and no flattening filter. Compared with the single-pass pump configurations, gain level, flatness and bandwidth are greatly improved by using the dual-pass amplification configuration. The limitation of this configuration caused by multi-path interference (MPI) noise and stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) is also discussed.