Photon statistics of single-mode zeros and ones from an erbium-doped fiber amplifier measured by means of homodyne tomography

Author

Voss, Paul ; Vasilyev, Michael ; Levandovsky, Dmitry ; Noh, Tae-Gon ; Kumar, Prem

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL, USA

Volume

12

Issue

10

fYear

2000

Firstpage

1340

Lastpage

1342

Abstract

We report measurement of the photon-number distributions of zeros and ones that emerge from an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) in an on-off modulated communication system. Single-mode single-photon resolution was achieved by employing the method of optical homodyne tomography. The measured distributions agree with the quantum predictions of a Bose-Einstein distribution for the zeros and a Laguerre (noncentral negative binomial) distribution for the ones over a dynamic range up to 40 dB. The resulting noise figure of the amplifier compares well to that measured by an optical spectrum analyzer.

Keywords

erbium; optical communication equipment; optical fibre amplifiers; optical noise; optical tomography; superradiance; ASE statistics; Bose-Einstein distribution; Laguerre distribution; dynamic range; erbium doped fiber amplifier; noise figure; on-off modulation; optical communication system; optical homodyne tomography; optical spectrum analyzer; photon number distribution; quantum mechanical model; single-mode single-photon resolution; Dynamic range; Erbium-doped fiber amplifier; Noise figure; Optical modulation; Optical noise; Semiconductor optical amplifiers; Single photon emission computed tomography; Statistical distributions; Statistics; Stimulated emission;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/68.883823

Filename

883823