NIST researchers have developed a new noiseless optical amplifier that can amplify weak light signals without adding noise while also carrying more information. This new development could improve optical communications, quantum computing and information processing, and enhance biological and astronomical imaging.
The amplifier works by intersecting light from three differently colored lasers – two “pumps” and a probe laser carrying the image – at precise angles inside a gas of hot rubidium atoms. The combination of the lasers’ color, their angle of intersection, and their interaction with the rubidium gas creates the conditions for noiseless amplification of complex images with potentially thousands of pixels.
However, the amplifier is “phase sensitive,” meaning that the pump and signal beams going into the amplifier have to remain stable with respect to each other to within a small fraction of a wavelength. This makes it harder to keep them aligned and stable than for the more common “phase insensitive” amplifiers.
The development of this noiseless optical amplifier has been published in a paper titled “Noiseless optical amplifier operating on hundreds of spatial modes” by N.V. Corzo, A.M. Marino, K.M. Jones, and P.D. Lett, and was published in Physical Review Letters on July 26, 2012.
Source: https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2012/08/seeing-light-nists-new-noiseless-optical-amplifier
Keywords: Amplification, Optical, Images, Quantum
