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Physical Review A

Low noise amplification and efficient squeezing from rate matched lasers

Timothy C. Ralph

Published Mar 1, 1997• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We investigate the quantum noise properties of lasers in which both the laser and pump form resonant cavity modes. We find that under conditions typical of solid-state lasers small signals placed on the pump beam of such systems can be found to be amplified on the laser output without incurring the usual 3 dB noise penalty associated with linear amplifiers. We also show that such systems can be very efficient producers of squeezed light.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.55.2326

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We investigate the quantum noise properties of lasers in which both the laser and pump form resonant cavity modes. We find that under conditions typical of solid-state lasers small signals placed on the pump beam of such systems can be found to be amplified on the laser output without incurring the usual 3 dB noise penalty associated with linear amplifiers. We also show that such systems can be very efficient producers of squeezed light.
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Optical parametric amplifiers (OPA's) and optical parametric oscillators (OPO's) can exhibit squeezed amplification when an injected signal beam is used to elicit small-signal gain saturation. This paper extends previous work on OPA/OPO noise behavior under signal injection. Doubly resonant and triply resonant, single-ended cavities are considered in the good-cavity limit. Owing to the nonlinear coupling between the signal and idler beams within the cavity, both are sensitive to the detuning of each beam from its respective resonance. Signal and idler output noise spectra are found by linearizing the quantum coupled-mode equations about the classical mean-field solutions. Cavity detunings lead to frequency dependent phase shifts between the low-noise and high-noise quadratures of both the signal and idler beams. Moreover, the phase of the low-noise quadrature need not coincide with that of the corresponding mean field. The resulting large-signal, signal-to-noise ratio improvement afforded by squeezed amplification is therefore sensitive to the cavity detunings. The effects of classical excess noise on the pump beam and the injected signal beam are also considered.
The principal problem of light amplifiers is to find a means to amplify a coherent amplitude without decreasing the SNR. Consider a signal with amplitude squeezed quantum fluctuations, that is, less noise in the amplitude quadrature than the phase quadrature. The objective is to find a phase sensitive amplifier, which, while amplifying the coherent amplitude, adds quantum noise preferentially to the phase quadrature. We take as a concrete model for the amplifier an intracavity parametric amplifier. We go beyond the usual linear analysis and include the nonlinear regime where pump depletion is important. We find that in the linear region the quantum noise added by the amplification process may be reduced by squeezing the idler mode, while in the nonlinear regime the quantum fluctuations from the pump become more important. These results are of direct application to practical light amplifiers.
A theoretical study is presented of the gain and the noise spectra of laser amplifiers at pumping rates both above and below the oscillation threshold. The theory is valid for both class-A and class-B laser systems, where the decay rate of the collective atomic dipole moment greatly exceeds the decay rates of the atomic population inversion and the laser cavity. The gain and the noise properties are shown to be strongly influenced by a four-wave mixing of the signal and image frequencies via a modulation of the population inversion. Particular attention is paid to the residual noise flux that persists in the laser output above threshold and to the typical characteristics of a second-order phase transition displayed by the gain in the threshold region. The results for the above-threshold laser amplifier are compared with experimental measurements of both gain and noise for the argon-ion (class-A) and CO2{\mathrm{CO}}_{2}CO2​ (class-B) lasers. The signal-to-noise ratios for both heterodyne and direct-detection measurements are evaluated, and the conditions are determined under which optical amplification can lead to an enhancement of sensitivity.
Spatial variations of the laser mode and pumping rate are incorporated into the theory of conventionally pumped lasers that produce squeezed light. Both a quantum-mechanical theory and a heuristic statistical model are used. While variations in the laser mode are found to have a negligible effect on squeezing, variations in the pumping rate are significant. The maximum attainable squeezing is always reduced compared with the spatially uniform case. However, resonantly enhancing a low-power pump in a Fabry-P\'erot cavity, rather than a ring cavity, may give better squeezing.
Recently optical parametric amplifiers (OPAs) with vacuum inputs have been extensively studied and shown to generate a significant amount of squeezing, but little is known about the quantum noise behavior of an OPA with an injected signal field. We have performed a linearized quantum analysis of a nondegenerate OPA operated in the saturated gain regime showing that the amplified output intensity of a coherent-state input signal becomes squeezed when the classical small-signal gain falls below unity. In uses such as master-oscillator power amplifiers, for which the signal of interest is the mean output intensity, the output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) can be higher than the input SNR over a broad operating range. For an OPA pumped at 90% of threshold, the SNR improvement is about a factor of 3, and with a 10-Db amplitude squeezed pump, the improvement increases to about a factor of 7. Such a tunable gain-saturated OPA with large-signal gain and improved SNR can be potentially useful in digital communication.