title: Design of a robust thin-film interference filter for erbium-doped fiber amplifier gain equalization.
abstract: Gain-flattening filters (GFFs) are key wavelength division multiplexing components in fiber-optics telecommunications. Challenging issues in the design of thin-film GFFs were recently the subject of a contest organized at the 2001 Conference on Optical Interference Coatings. The interest and main difficulty of the proposed problem was to minimize the sensitivity of a GFF to simulated fabrication errors. A high-yield solution and its design philosophy are described. The approach used to control the filter robustness is explained and illustrated by numerical results.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Microstructural Sciences, National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. pierre.verly@nrc.ca
authors.forename: Pierre G
authors.initials: PG
authors.lastname: Verly