Phase Sensitive Amplfiiers

Optical amplifiers are an integral part of any commercial optical communication system. In addition to adding a specific gain, optical amplifiers add a definite noise to the signal that degrades the optical signal-to-noise ratio of the signal after amplification. When advanced modulation formats such as Polarization multiplexed QPSK and 16QAM are used for optical communication, increase in noise - especially a phase noise due to spontaneous emission in an amplifier like erbium doped fiber amplifier is highly detrimental. In the project, we demonstrate parametric and phase sensitive amplifiers that are suitable specifically for phase modulated data. We use semiconductor optical amplifier as a compact and energy efficient nonlinear medium to achieve this target.