How to characterize the nonlinear amplifier?
The conception of the amplification of the coherent field is formulated. The definition of the coefficient of the amplification as the relation between the mean value of the field at the output to the value at the input and the definition of the noise as the difference between the number of photons in the output mode and square of the modulus of the mean value of the output amplitude are considered. Using a simple example it is shown that by these definitions the noise of the nonlinear amplifier may be less than the noise of the ideal linear amplifier of the same amplification coefficient. Proposals to search another definition of basic parameters of the nonlinear amplifiers are discussed. This definition should enable us to formulate the universal fundamental lower limit of the noise which should be valid for linear quantum amplifiers as for nonlinear ones.