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IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society Annual Meeting (LEOS)

Signal-to-noise characteristics of nonlinear optical amplifiers

Robert W. Boyd, G. S. Agarwal, William V. Davis, Alexander L. Gaeta, Martti Olavi Kauranen, Elna M. Nagasako

Published Dec 30, 2002• 0 citations
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Abstract

In this paper, we present the results of our theoretical and experimental studies of the noise properties of optical amplifiers that operate by means of nonlinear optical gain processes. We pay particular attention to amplifiers that utilize the nonlinear optical response of strongly driven atomic vapors, and we compare the results of our measurements with theoretical predictions for the quantum noise limit of an optical amplifier. Our work focuses on optical amplifiers that utilize the nonlinear optical response of atomic vapors.>

DOI
10.1109/leos.1993.379036

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In this paper, we present the results of our theoretical and experimental studies of the noise properties of optical amplifiers that operate by means of nonlinear optical gain processes. We pay particular attention to amplifiers that utilize the nonlinear optical response of strongly driven atomic vapors, and we compare the results of our measurements with theoretical predictions for the quantum noise limit of an optical amplifier. Our work focuses on optical amplifiers that utilize the nonlinear optical response of atomic vapors.>
Quantum mechanical arguments show that any optical amplifier must add noise to the amplified beam of light.For the case of a high gain amplifier with a coherent (Poissonian) input, the signal-to-noise ratio of the amplified beam must be at least two times smaller than that of the incident beam.We review the theoretical basis of this prediction.We also describe the results of our experimental investigations of the noise properties of optical amplifiers that utilize the nonlinear optical response of strongly driven atomic transitions.
There is great interest in developing low-noise optical amplifiers that can be used in optical communication systems. Optical amplifiers have been constructed from laser amplifiers, optical fibers, Raman cells, χ(2) nonlinear crystals, and atomic vapors. Optical amplifiers that make use of two- beam coupling in atomic vapors are particularly important since they are able to amplify a continuous-wave multiple-transverse-mode optical signal with a single-pass gain greater than 10 at the bandwidths necessary for optical communications.1 For these reasons, we present an experimental and theoretical study of the noise properties of a probe beam amplified through two-beam coupling in potassium vapor. We also describe the conditions under which this optical amplifier can operate as a quantum-noise-limited linear amplifier.
In this paper we evaluate experimentally measured signal-to-noise ratio performance of different types of optical amplifiers [V. Josse, M. Sabuncu, N. Cerf, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 96 163602 (2006); Z.Y. Ou, S.F. Pereira and H.J. Kimble, Phys. Rev. Lett. 70 3239 (1993)]. We pay particular attention to the low gain regime where the quantum limit of the amplifier varies with gain. Independent of the amplifier type the noise performance is remarkably close to the quantum limit. Low gain optical amplifiers are of interest for quantum communication.
We investigate theoretically the noise properties of the amplification of a weak probe beam in an atomic vapor pumped by an intense nearly resonant pump field. For the case of gain via the three-photon effect, we find that only in the limit in which collisional broadening is absent can the system operate as an ideal quantum-noise limited optical amplifier for the probe wave. For the case of gain via stimulated Rayleight scattering, we find that the minimum noise figure is four times that of an ideal optical amplifier, and that it occurs when the atomic system is predominantly collisionally broadened.
We have measured the gain and statistical-noise properties of a weak probe beam amplified through two-beam coupling in atomic-potassium vapor for both the Rabi and stimulated Rayleigh gain features. The probe-beam gain was observed to be as large as 125 for the Rabi feature, whereas the gain was typically less than 2 for the Rayleigh feature. The rms noise at the Rabi gain feature was approximately three times greater than the ideal amplifier quantum-noise limit. For the Rayleigh gain feature, the rms noise was 12 to 15 times greater than the ideal amplifier quantum-noise limit. We present a fully quantum-mechanical theory of two-beam coupling in a system of two-level atoms which includes the effects of atomic motion and pump-beam absorption. The predictions of this theory are in good agreement with the experimental data. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
We present a theoretical analysis and an experimental study of the statistical properties of the noise accompanying an optical pulse propagating in a nonlinear semiconductor optical amplifier. Several degrees of gain saturation corresponding to different levels of optical signal-to-noise ratios (OSNRs) are examined. We employ the Heun numerical procedure to ensure proper convergence to the Stratonovich solution of the multiplicative propagation equation. This algorithm takes also into account the effect of gain saturation due to the amplified spontaneous emission noise. Moreover, the multicanonical Monte Carlo algorithm is used to efficiently calculate the probability density functions (pdfs), including the tails, of the peak of a pulse which emerges at the output of a saturated semiconductor optical amplifier. The results are compared to the corresponding pdfs obtained in a linear amplification system (where the optical noise is additive and Gaussian) having the same gain and under identical OSNR levels. We demonstrate that the pdf of the saturated amplifier is shifted toward lower power levels and is narrower, or equivalently, the mean and variance for the saturated amplifier case are smaller. Also, the difference between the two configurations increases with the degree of gain saturation. The theoretical predictions are confirmed by a series of experiments in which the pdfs at the output of the linear amplification scheme and saturated semiconductor optical amplifier are measured for an optical pulse of /spl sim/ 70-ps duration.