Squeezed Light for Coherent Communications

Coherent lightwave communications systems are approaching a limit where the error rates and channel capacities are limited by the quantum properties of light. This is often referred to as the shot-noise limit. If ideal laser light is used in the system, there is no way to avoid this limit. However, new states of the light field called squeezed states have recently been developed that allow an improvement in error rates below the shot-noise limit. Squeezed light concepts and recent experiments are reviewed here with emphasis on aspects important to coherent communications. Applications of squeezed light to optical elements including beamsplitters, amplifiers, interferometers, and switches are described. It is shown that channel capacity can be improved using squeezed light by only a factor of two. Larger improvements are in principle possible for error rates, e.g., a factor of three reduction in the number of required photons per bit for a 10 ~9 bit error rate. An example of a recent high-performance system is described where optical losses and electronic noise reduce the improvement expected using squeezed light to the 10–20 percent level. It is concluded that squeezed light only offers significant improvement in bit error rates for very high efficiency systems.