All optical gain-locking in erbium-doped fiber amplifiers using double-pass superfluorescence

All optical gain-locking in an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) is demonstrated. A double-pass superfluorescence is created by using a broad-band fiber reflector centered at 1530 nm at the output of the EDFA, to lock the gain at 21 dB. Experiments on an eight-channel wavelength-division-multiplexing system shows promise with gain variation between channels of less than 0.6 dB over the input signal power range. While, gain variation with input signal power is about 0.2 dB for all channels.