Noise characteristics of high-power doped-fibre superluminescent sources

Abstract

Measurement of the noise characteristics of a superluminescent erbium-doped silica fibre source shows a noise component in addition to shot noise, which prevents the SNR of the source output increasing beyond a fixed value. The additional noise component can be attributed to excess photon noise previously identified with light from thermal sources, and will be present in all broadband sources emitting above a certain power.