Dynamic birefringence of the linear optical amplifier and application in optical regeneration.

Dynamic birefringence of the linear optical amplifier (LOA) is theoretically and experimentally investigated. Significant nonlinear variations of the state of polarization with the input power and bias current of the LOA have been found. Based on this nonlinear change of the state of polarization, an all-optical 2R regenerator is demonstrated. Under static operation, an extinction ratio (ER) improvement of 15 dB has been obtained for an input ER of 5 dB. With a degraded input signal, a receiver sensitivity improvement of over 3 dB at a bit-error rate (BER) of 10-9 has been found for 2.5 Gb/s. For 10 Gb/s, zero power penalty is observed. Significant improvements of ER for both 2.5 and 10 Gb/s are obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]