Measurement of Carrier-Density Mediated Intermodulation Distortion in an Optical Amplifier.
01 January 1987
We measured intermodulation distortion generated by the presence of two optical tones separated by up to 1 GHz in a 1.3micron near-travelling wave optical amplifier. The measured distortion is consistent with calculations of third-order nonlinearity caused by carrier-density modulation. The third-order intercept of 5 dBm may be more restrictive in closely-spaced frequency- multiplexed systems than gain saturation.