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Amplification Factor

Author: the photonics expert Dr. Rüdiger Paschotta (RP)

Definition: the factor by which the power of a signal is amplified

Alternative term: gain factor

Category: article belongs to category optical amplifiers optical amplifiers

DOI: 10.61835/9ke Cite the article: BibTex plain text HTML Link to this page LinkedIn

The amplification factor (or gain factor) of an optical amplifier is the factor by which the input power is amplified. For lasers amplifiers, it depends on various details of the laser gain medium and on the degree of its excitation, apart from the optical wavelength and possibly the beam polarization. For optical parametric amplifiers, it depends on the length of the nonlinear crystal, the pump intensity, beam diameters and other factors.

During amplification of an intense optical pulse, the amplification factor may drop due to gain saturation. An effective amplification factor may then be defined as the ratio of output energy and input energy.

An alternative specification of gain is in terms of decibels, calculated as 10 times the logarithm to base 10 of the amplification factor.

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