Parametric Amplification, Wavelength Conversion, and Phase Conjugation of a 2.048-Tbit/s WDM PDM 16-QAM Signal

We demonstrate polarization-independent parametric amplification of a 2.048-Tbit/s 8-WDM PDM 16-QAM signal and simultaneous wavelength conversion and phase conjugation in a highly nonlinear fiber. Two high-power continuous-wave pumps with orthogonal polarizations and counter-phase modulation are used in the fiber optical parametric amplifier (FOPA) to achieve broadband flat gain, polarization independence, and high-quality idler generation. The polarization-independent FOPA is amplitude and phase preserving and has ~10 dB on-off gain for the signal and ~9 dB conversion efficiency for the idler with a 1-dB bandwidth of ~16 nm. Compared to the back-to-back case, the amplified signals and the wavelength-converted conjugates have mean Q² penalties of only 0.6 and 0.4 dB, respectively, with variances of Q² factors across all the wavelength-division-multiplexed channels of only 0.3 dB. This demonstration shows the great promise of optical signal processing techniques to simultaneously process large-capacity multiple-channel multilevel signals with almost no latency and potentially low power consumption.