We study the competing effects of stimulated and spontaneous emission on the information capacity of an amplifying disordered waveguide. At the laser threshold the capacity reaches a “universal” limit, independent of the degree of disorder. Whether or not this limit is larger or smaller than the capacity without amplification depends on the disorder, as well as on the input power. Explicit expressions are obtained for heterodyne detection of coherent states, and generalized for an arbitrary detection scheme.

• Received 19 March 2002

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.89.043902