Laser pumpingLaser pumping is the act of energy transfer from an external source into the gain medium of a laser. The energy is absorbed in the medium, producing excited states in its atoms. When the number of particles in one excited state exceeds the number of particles in the ground state or a less-excited state, population inversion is achieved. In this condition, the mechanism of stimulated emission can take place and the medium can act as a laser or an optical amplifier. The pump power must be higher than the lasing threshold of the laser.
In-phase and quadrature componentsA sinusoid with modulation can be decomposed into, or synthesized from, two amplitude-modulated sinusoids that are offset in phase by one-quarter cycle (90 degrees or pi/2 radians). All three sinusoids have the same center frequency. The two amplitude-modulated sinusoids are known as the in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) components, which describes their relationships with the amplitude- and phase-modulated carrier. Or in other words, it is possible to create an arbitrarily phase-shifted sine wave, by mixing together two sine waves that are 90° out of phase in different proportions.
ModulationIn electronics and telecommunications, modulation is the process of varying one or more properties of a periodic waveform, called the carrier signal, with a separate signal called the modulation signal that typically contains information to be transmitted. For example, the modulation signal might be an audio signal representing sound from a microphone, a video signal representing moving images from a video camera, or a digital signal representing a sequence of binary digits, a bitstream from a computer.
