Noise characteristics of fiber optical parametric amplifiers

We derive an analytical theory for the noise figure of an undepleted and lossless fiber optical parametric amplifier (FOPA). Both the signal and the wavelength converted idler are investigated. Our theory is applicable for both an ideal pump power source, as well as a noisy one. We find that a noisy pump source can severely degrade the performance at high gain due to the stochastic gain-variations the signal and idler will experience. The theory is compared with Monte Carlo simulations of the FOPA and an excellent agreement is obtained. Simulations in the gain-depleted region show the possibility to reach below quantum-limited, phase-insensitive amplification for single channel transmission.

[1]  R. Stolen,et al.  Parametric amplification and frequency conversion in optical fibers , 1982 .

[2]  N. Olsson.  Lightwave systems with optical amplifiers , 1989 .

[3]  Yoshihisa Yamamoto,et al.  Fundamentals of optical amplifiers , 1989 .

[4]  A. Yariv.  Signal-to-noise considerations in fiber links with periodic or distributed optical amplification. , 1990, Optics letters.

[5]  Quantum Noise Treated with Classical Electrical Network Theory , 1994 .

[6]  J. Ralston,et al.  High-power fibre-coupled 1550 nm DFB laser modules for externally-modulated fibre-optic transmission , 1997 .

[7]  Xiupu Zhang,et al.  Noise Characteristics and Optimum Fiber Length of Spectral Inversion Using Four-Wave Mixing in a Dispersion-Shifted Fiber , 1997 .

[8]  Magnus Karlsson,et al.  Four-wave mixing in fibers with randomly varying zero-dispersion wavelength , 1998 .

[9]  Per Olof Hedekvist,et al.  Noise characteristics of fiber-based optical phase conjugators , 1999 .

[10]  P. Andrekson,et al.  Broad-band continuous-wave-pumped fiber optical parametric amplifier with 49-dB gain and wavelength-conversion efficiency , 2001, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[11]  Peter A. Andrekson,et al.  Fiber-based optical parametric amplifiers and their applications , 2002 .

[12]  Ozdal Boyraz,et al.  Fiber parametric amplifiers for wavelength band conversion , 2002 .

[13]  Kyo Inoue,et al.  Experimental study on noise characteristics of a gain-saturated fiber optical parametric amplifier , 2002 .

[14]  C. McKinstrie,et al.  Parametric amplifiers driven by two pump waves , 2002, Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics, 2003. CLEO '03..