Combating dispersion with parametric amplifiers

A novel approach to combating the pulse broadening effect of group-velocity dispersion in a fiber-optic communication link is presented. In the scheme linear loss in the fiber is balanced by a chain of periodically spaced, phase-sensitive, degenerate optical parametric amplifiers. Analysis of pulse propagation in such a fiber line shows that, due to attenuation in the quadrature orthogonal to the amplified quadrature, it is possible for a pulse to propagate without significant broadening over lengths much longer than the usual dispersion length of the fiber.<
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