Energy Transfer and Migration of Excitation in Solids and Confined Structures

With the advances of Rare-Earth doped fibre amplifiers studies for telecommunication networks, a number of energy transfer processes barely noticeable in bulk materials are found to be considerably enhanced in the confined structure of optical fibres. Having recalled the basics of energy transfers, the following processes are discussed: radiative and non-radiative multiphonon transitions, APTE and cooperative up-conversion, photon avalanche. The relation of such processes with up-conversion lasers and optical amplification are finally discussed. Through this seminar, the current frontier in research in the Rare Earth (R.E.) doped fibre field is presented.