Title :
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
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;
Journal_Title :
Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE