Integrated silicon optical amplifier with reduced residual pump
| DWPI Title: Mach-Zehnder interferometer optical amplifier e.g. silicon photonic integrated circuit, includes input coupler adapted to receive input signal, and first and second optical amplifiers adapted to optically amplify input signal, and output coupler adapted to couple all of amplified input signal |
| Abstract: An optical amplifier device employing a Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (MZI) that reduces the amount of residual pump power in the optical output of the amplifier is disclosed. The MZI amplifier employs two geometrically linear optical amplifier arms or two multi-spatial-mode racetrack optical amplifiers to amplify a signal with a pumping beam, with the signal output port having extremely low levels of residual pump power. The MZI optical amplifier is a silicon photonic integrated circuit, with all optical amplifiers, couplers, phase shifters, and optical attenuators formed of silicon photonic integrated circuit elements. The MZI optical amplifier may include one, two, or three MZI stages, and multiple MZI optical amplifiers may be used in parallel or sequentially to achieve higher overall signal gain or power. The MZI optical amplifier may employ Brillouin-scattering-based amplifiers, Raman-based integrated waveguide optical amplifiers, or Erbium-doped integrated waveguide optical amplifiers. |
| Use: Mach-Zehnder interferometer optical amplifier e.g. silicon photonic integrated circuit. |
| Advantage: The Mach-Zehnder interferometer is capable of reducing amount of residual pump power in optical output of the amplifier, and improving ratio of amplified signal power to pump power. This is achieved primarily by more nearly canceling out the pump power at the output. |
| Novelty: A Mach-Zehnder interferometer optical amplifier (200) includes an input coupler (230) adapted to receive an input signal and a pump beam, where the input coupler is adapted to couple approximately 50:50 split of input signal and pump beam to each of first and second input coupler outputs, and first and second optical amplifiers (240A) and (240B) including respective first and second optical amplifier inputs optically connected to respective first and second input coupler outputs, each of the first and second optical amplifiers adapted to optically amplify the input signal and output the thus amplified input signal from respective first and second optical amplifier outputs, and an output coupler (250) adapted to couple all of the amplified input signal to amplified signal output port (260) and to couple approximately all of remaining portion of the pump beam to a pump output port (270), where the Mach-Zehnder interferometer optical amplifier is a silicon photonic integrated circuit. |
| Filed: 11/16/2020 |
| Application Number: US17098577A |
| Tech ID: SD 15008.1 |
| This invention was made with Government support under Contract No. DE-NA0003525 awarded by the United States Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration. The Government has certain rights in the invention. |
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