In electronics and control system theory, loop gain is the sum of the gain, expressed as a ratio or in decibels, around a feedback loop. Feedback loops are widely used in electronics in amplifiers and oscillators, and more generally in both electronic and nonelectronic industrial control systems to control industrial plant and equipment. The concept is also used in biology. In a feedback loop, the output of a device, process or plant is sampled and applied to alter the input, to better control the output. The loop gain, along with the related concept of loop phase shift, determines the behavior of the device, and particularly whether the output is stable, or unstable, which can result in oscillation. The importance of loop gain as a parameter for characterizing electronic feedback amplifiers was first recognized by Heinrich Barkhausen in 1921, and was developed further by Hendrik Wade Bode and Harry Nyquist at Bell Labs in the 1930s.

for details, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_gain