Methods for full utilization of the bandwidth of fiber optical parametric amplifiers and wavelength converters

In fiber optical parametric amplifiers (OPAs), idlers are generated during the amplification process. For very wide and dense signal input spectra, idlers may overlap with signals, thereby interfering with proper operation as an amplifier. In this paper, filter-based methods to fully utilize the bandwidth of OPAs and wavelength converters in the presence of very broad signal spectra are investigated. In the basic filter setup, two parallel OPAs and two filters are used; alternatively, one can use a single OPA bidirectionally and a single filter. An interleaver-based arrangement, separating signals from idlers at the system output, with a crosstalk of below -20 dB and subdecibel bit-error-rate penalty, is experimentally demonstrated.