Noiseless optical amplifier operating on hundreds of spatial modes

N. V. Corzo, A. M. Marino, K. M. Jones, P. D. Lett

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Abstract

We implement a noiseless optical amplifier using a phase-sensitive four-wave mixing process in rubidium vapor. We observe performance near the quantum limit for this type of amplifier over a range of experimental parameters and show that the noise figure is always better than would be obtained with a phase-insensitive amplifier with the same gain. Additionally, we observe that the amplifier supports hundreds of spatial modes, making it possible to amplify complex two-dimensional spatial patterns with less than a 10% degradation of the input signal-to-noise ratio for gains up to 4.6. To confirm the multimode character of the amplifier, we study the noise figure as a function of spatially-varying losses. Additionally, we investigate the spatial resolution of the amplifier and show that it supports a range of spatial frequencies from 1.3 to more than 35 line pairs per millimeter.

Original languageEnglish
Article number043602
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume109
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 26 2012
Externally publishedYes

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