Towards the Ultra-Sensitive Optical Link Enabled by Low Noise Phase-Sensitive Amplifiers
Journal article, 2011

Optical phase-sensitive amplifiers (PSAs) are known to be capable, in principle, of realizing noiseless amplification and improving the signal-to-noise-ratio of optical links by 3 dB compared to conventional, phase-insensitively amplified links. However, current state-of-the-art PSAs are still far from being practical, lacking e.g. significant noise performance improvement, broadband gain and modulation-format transparency. Here we demonstrate experimentally, for the first time, an optical-fiber-based non-degenerate PSA link consisting of a phase-insensitive parametric copier followed by a PSA that provides broadband amplification, signal modulation-format independence, and nearly 6-dB link noise-figure (NF) improvement over conventional, erbium-doped fiber amplifier based links. The PSA has a record-low 1.1-dB NF, and can be extended to work with multiple wavelength channels with modest system complexity. This concept can also be realized in other materials with third-order nonlinearities, and is useful in any attenuation-limited optical link.

Author

Zhi Tong

Chalmers, Microtechnology and Nanoscience (MC2), Photonics

Carl Peter Lundström

Chalmers, Microtechnology and Nanoscience (MC2), Photonics

Peter Andrekson

Chalmers, Microtechnology and Nanoscience (MC2), Photonics

Colin McKinstrie

Nokia

Magnus Karlsson

Chalmers, Microtechnology and Nanoscience (MC2), Photonics

Daniel Blessing

University of California

Ekawit Tipsuwannakul

Chalmers, Microtechnology and Nanoscience (MC2), Photonics

Benjamin Puttnam

Japan National Institute of Information and Communications Technology

Hiroyuki Toda

Doshisha University

Lars Gruner-Nielsen

OFS Fitel Denmark ApS

Nature Photonics

1749-4885 (ISSN) 17494893 (eISSN)

Vol. 5 7 430-436

Areas of Advance

Information and Communication Technology

Subject Categories

Telecommunications

Roots

Basic sciences

DOI

10.1038/NPHOTON.2011.79

More information

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2/7/2020 1