Phase-matching and mitigation of four-wave mixing in fibers with positive gain

We present a theoretical study of four-wave mixing interactions in fibers in the presence of gain. In contrast to passive fibers, positive gain at the pump wavelength leads to constructive generation of the signal and idler waves, even in the case of large phase-mismatch, so that FWM processes can be very efficient even in isotropic single-mode fibers with normal dispersion. We also propose simple ways to mitigate these parametric interactions by applying a controlled variation of the phase-mismatch along the fiber. These concepts apply to all optical amplifiers. (c) 2007 Optical Society of America.