Abstract
We demonstrate experimentally and numerically an unexpected spectral asymmetry in the saturated-gain spectrum of single-pump fiber optical parametric amplifiers. The interaction between higher-order four-wave mixing products and dispersive waves radiated as an effect of third-order dispersion influences the energy transfer to the signal, depending on its detuning with respect to the pump, and breaks the symmetry of the gain expected from phase-matching considerations in unsaturated amplifiers. The asymmetry feature of the saturated spectrum is shown to particularly depend on the dispersion characteristics of the amplifier and shows local maxima for specific dispersion values.
Highlights
Optical parametric amplification based on four-wave mixing (FWM) and relying on the ultrafast third order nonlinearity of glass fibers is commonly used for all-optical signal processing, such as pulse generation, frequency conversion, amplitude regeneration etc [1,2,3]
This paper reports an experimental observation of the asymmetry of the gain spectrum of single-pump fiber optical parametric amplifiers (FOPAs) under strong saturation for the first time
Our work focuses on spectral asymmetry in the signal gain, which may lead to spectral holes in strong saturation
Summary
Optical parametric amplification based on four-wave mixing (FWM) and relying on the ultrafast third order nonlinearity of glass fibers is commonly used for all-optical signal processing, such as pulse generation, frequency conversion, amplitude regeneration etc [1,2,3]. The fast gain response of saturated fiber optical parametric amplifiers (FOPAs) enables the reduction of the intensity fluctuations of the input signal [2,4]. Numerical simulations verify the experimental results and show that the asymmetry feature depends on the dispersion terms of the amplifier
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