OPTICAL SYSTEM, PARTICULARLY AN OPTICAL COMMUNICATION TRANSMISSION SYSTEM WITH OPTICAL CONTROL OF AN OPTICAL AMPLIFIER OR WAVELENGTH CONVERSION OF THE OPTICAL SIGNALS TO BE TRANSMITTED

摘要

OPTICAL SYSTEM, PARTICULARLY AN OPTICAL COMMUNICATION TRANSMISSION SYSTEM WITH OPTICAL CONTROL OF AN OPTICAL AMPLIFIER OR WAVELENGTH CONVERSION OF THE OPTICAL SIGNALS TO BE TRANSMITTED An optical system including an optical amplifier (20) containing a laser active substance whose laser active substance is excited by pump light to a metastable energy level, with the optical system further comprises, in addition to the laser (2) generating the amplifiable light (.lambda.2), a further laser (3) with whose output light the amplification of the amplifiable light can be controlled. This is done in that absorption of the light (.lambda.3) of the further laser (3) causes transitions of the laser active substance from the metastable level to a higher level so that thus the occupation of the metastable level can be influenced as this occupation is a function of the amplification of the light to be amplified. A first application for the novel optical system is a communication transmission system in which the wavelength of the optical signal to be transmitted can be converted to the wavelength of the light amplifiable by the optical amplifier (20). A second application is an optical communication transmission system in which the amplification of an optical signal to be transmitted can be optically controlled or is to be additionally modulatable with one or a plurality of additional signals. (Figure 1)1