Broadband optical parametric amplifier formed by two pairs of adjacent four-wave mixing sidebands in a tellurite microstructured optical fibre

A broadband fibre-optical parametric amplifier (FOPA) operating at a novel wavelength region that is far from the pump wavelength has been demonstrated by exploiting two pairs of adjacent four-wave mixing (FWM) sidebands generated simultaneously in a tellurite microstructured optical fibre (TMOF). Owing to the large nonlinearity of the TMOF and the high pump peak power provided by a picosecond laser, a maximal average gain of 65.1 dB has been obtained. When the FOPA is operated in a saturated state, a flat-gain amplification from 1424 nm to 1459 nm can be achieved. This broadband and high-gain FOPA operating at new wavelength regions far from the pump offers the prospect of all-optical signal processing. (paper)