Abstract
We experimentally demonstrated the amplification of optical disc readout signals by homodyne detection. This technique uses optical interference to amplify the signals. We further applied phase-diversity detection to reliably obtain the amplified readout signal. The optical system was carefully designed so that sufficient stability is assured and a sufficiently amplified readout signal can be obtained. We experimentally demonstrated a 3.6 times amplification of a Blu-ray Disc readout signal. The present technique will be essential for the real commercialization of next-generation multilayer optical disc because of its outstanding ability of signal-to-noise ratio improvement.
