Laser-Like Performance of Side-Pumped Dye-Doped Polymer Optical Fibers

Mirrorless graded-index polymer optical fibers doped with the organic dye rhodamine 6G result in very compact broadband fiber lasers in the visible region when pumped from the side. The emission spectrum, threshold, and efficiency obtained on both fiber ends depend on the lengths of the directly illuminated region and of the non-excited ones. The paper analyzes such parameters both experimentally and theoretically for the first time.