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Nature Research, Nature Communications, 1(5), 2014

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms6609

Nature Research, Nature Communications, 1(5), 2014

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms6163

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Erratum: Noiseless intensity amplification of repetitive signals by coherent addition using the temporal Talbot effect

Journal article published in 2014 by Reza Maram, James Van Howe, Ming Li, José Azaña
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

AbstractAmplification of signal intensity is essential for initiating physical processes, diagnostics, sensing, communications and measurement. During traditional amplification, the signal is amplified by multiplying the signal carriers through an active gain process, requiring the use of an external power source. In addition, the signal is degraded by noise and distortions that typically accompany active gain processes. We show noiseless intensity amplification of repetitive optical pulse waveforms with gain from 2 to ~20 without using active gain. The proposed method uses a dispersion-induced temporal self-imaging (Talbot) effect to redistribute and coherently accumulate energy of the original repetitive waveforms into fewer replica waveforms. In addition, we show how our passive amplifier performs a real-time average of the wave-train to reduce its original noise fluctuation, as well as enhances the extinction ratio of pulses to stand above the noise floor. Our technique is applicable to repetitive waveforms in any spectral region or wave system.