Dispersive optical bistability with a threshold cw input power of approximately 10 mW has been observed in a single-mode fiber-optic ring resonator. Light is coupled in and out of the resonator by a single-mode-fiber variable directional coupler. A fiber-optic Faraday isolator is incorporated into the ring, thus increasing the threshold for stimulated Brillouin oscillation by a factor of 100 and permitting other weaker nonlinear effects such as bistability to be observed. Phase-sensitive amplification and deamplification (squeezing) of classical time-stationary noise is demonstrated and shown to be in agreement with the theory of squeezed-state generation in such a nonlinear fiber ring resonator. Light scattering by elastic eigenmodes of the fiber (guided-acoustic-wave Brillouin scattering, GAWBS) adds noise to light circulating in the resonator and obscures the observation of squeezed quantum fluctuations. The properties of this GAWBS scattering are investigated and compared with theory.

Journal of the Optical Society of America BFeb 1, 198831 citations

Bistability, nondegenerate four-wave mixing and squeezed state generation in a single-mode fiber ring resonator

Robert M. Shelby, M. D. Levenson

In optical fibers, nonlinear dispersion due to the same third-order susceptibility as that responsible for parametric mixing significantly alters the squeezing behavior in a traveling wave geometry, giving the squeezed quadrature an intensity dependent phase and reducing the overall squeezing. Phase noise is not squeezed at all. In the case of a fiber ring resonator, the nonlinear susceptibility will also lead to dispersive optical bistability and the squeezing will be strongly dependent on pump and sideband detuning. Yurke1 has analyzed squeezing due to backward four-wave mixing in a cavity, but the pump wave did not circulate in the cavity, and bistability was not dealt with. We have developed a theory of the resonant fiber ring interferometer, where the pump wave is near resonance with an interferometer mode and the circulating power is thereby enhanced. For perfect pump resonance and for frequencies corresponding to sideband resonance, the overall enhancement of the squeezing in the output mode compared to the traveling wave case is proportional to the square of the resonator finesse. The best squeezing in the output mode is always found for this condition of sideband resonance. The phase of the minimum noise quadrature is quite sensitive to both pump and sideband detuning. This feature may provide a means for avoiding excess thermal phase noise due to guided acoustic wave Brillouin scattering in the fiber itself. At the critical points for dispersive optical bistability in such a resonator and for sideband resonance (i.e., noise frequencies which are multiples of the resonator free spectral range), perfect squeezing of the output light is predicted. This result was also obtained previously for the case of degenerate mixing in a resonant cavity by Collett and Walls.2 Our current theory does not account for the reduction in squeezing due to the loss present in such a resonator.2 Since the loss is also enhanced by a factor of the resonator finesse, this is of some concern and will limit the maximum useful finesse for quantum noise squeezing. The major source of loss is the single-mode directional coupler, which for currently available technology is of the order of a few percent.

Annual Meeting Optical Society of AmericaJan 1, 19851 citation