title: Noiseless intensity amplification of repetitive signals by coherent addition using the temporal Talbot effect.
abstract: Amplification of signal intensity is essential for initiating physical processes, diagnostics, sensing, communications and measurement. During traditional amplification, the signal is amplified by multiplying the signal carriers through an active gain process, requiring the use of an external power source. In addition, the signal is degraded by noise and distortions that typically accompany active gain processes. We show noiseless intensity amplification of repetitive optical pulse waveforms with gain from 2 to ~20 without using active gain. The proposed method uses a dispersion-induced temporal self-imaging (Talbot) effect to redistribute and coherently accumulate energy of the original repetitive waveforms into fewer replica waveforms. In addition, we show how our passive amplifier performs a real-time average of the wave-train to reduce its original noise fluctuation, as well as enhances the extinction ratio of pulses to stand above the noise floor. Our technique is applicable to repetitive waveforms in any spectral region or wave system.
authors.affiliation: Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS)-Energie, Matériaux et Télécommunications, Montréal, Québec, Canada H5A 1K6.
authors.forename: Reza
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Maram
authors.affiliation: 1] Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS)-Energie, Matériaux et Télécommunications, Montréal, Québec, Canada H5A 1K6 [2] Department of Physics and Astronomy, Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois 61201, USA.
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Van Howe
authors.affiliation: 1] Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS)-Energie, Matériaux et Télécommunications, Montréal, Québec, Canada H5A 1K6 [2] State Key Laboratory on Integrated Optoelectronics, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100083, China.
authors.forename: Ming
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS)-Energie, Matériaux et Télécommunications, Montréal, Québec, Canada H5A 1K6.
authors.forename: José
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Azaña