Effect of counter-phase pump modulation of phase-sensitive amplifiers noise performance and SBS suppression

Journal article, 2025

Optical phase-sensitive amplifiers (PSAs) leverage nonlinear interactions to achieve noise figures below the conventional quantum limit. Dual-pump phase-insensitive amplification has been studied in wavelength conversion, phase conjugation and spectral inversion, but phase-sensitive amplification remains challenging due to stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in optical fibers. While pump-phase modulation helps mitigate SBS, it broadens the idler spectrum, complicating practical implementation. We demonstrate a counter-phase pump modulation approach to suppress idler spectral broadening using optical coherent combining and delayed self-heterodyne techniques to achieve excellent noise figure (NF) performance in dual-pump PSAs. Our methods achieve over 30 dB suppression of residual phase modulation tones and significantly improve the idler spectrum. We obtained a 20 dB gain with an NF of 1.45 dB and a minimal NF penalty of 0.2 dB due to pump-phase modulation. This achievement enables PSAs to support optical communication, wavelength conversion, and deep-space communication applications.