All optical gain-locking in erbium-doped fiber amplifiers using double-pass superfluorescence

All optical gain-locking in an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) is demon strated. A double-pass superfluorescence is created by using a broad-band f iber reflector centered at 1530 mn at the output of the EDFA, to lock the g ain at 21 dB. Experiments on an eight-channel wavelength-division-multiplex ing system shows promise with gain variation between channels of less than 0.6 dB over the input signal power range. While, gain variation with input signal power is about 0.2 dB for all channels.