Spectroscopic investigation of proton exchanged Er-doped LiNbO3 waveguides

Abstract In this work, the spectroscopic properties of locally Er3+ -doped LiNbO3 waveguides obtained by proton exchange (PE) and reverse proton exchange (RPE) techniques have been explored. It has been found that the presence of protons induces an increment in the non-radiative de-excitation probabilities which affects the dominant emission bands of the Er3+ ions as well as their temporal evolution.