Nonlinearity-based all-optical sampling of ultrahigh-bandwidth optical signals

Paper in proceeding, 2004

We demonstrate an all-optical waveform sampling system with simultaneous sub-mW optical signal sensitivity (20 dB SNR) and sub-picosecond temporal resolution over more than 60 nm optical bandwidth. The optical sampling was implemented by four-wave mixing in a 10 m highly nonlinear fiber using a sampling pulse source with a sampling pulse peak power of only 16 W. The sampling performance was evaluated in terms of sensitivity, temporal resolution and optical bandwidth with respect to fiber length, sampling pulse source wavelength offset from the zero-dispersion wavelength of the highly nonlinear fiber, sampling pulse peak power and walk-off due to chromatic dispersion. We also present a summary of the available methods to achieve polarization-independent optical sampling.