New implementation of optical waveform sampling systems in a cost-effective manner

What is it about?

Fast and accurate characterization of ultrashort optical pulses is often required by, for example, the study of picosecond/subpicosecond pulsed lasers, ultrahigh−speed optical transmitters, light pulse propagation in various optical media (including optical fibres), and ultrafast all−optical signal processing, respectively. A simple application of pulse evaluation is to monitor the waveforms of ultrashort optical pulses and to measure the full−width at half−maximum, rise and fall times of such a pulse. In this paper, we present a new implementation of optical waveform sampling systems by employing our newly constructed free−running mode−locked fibre laser with a tunable repetition rate and a low timing jitter, an all−optical waveform sampler with a highly nonlinear fibre (HNLF), and our developed computer algorithm for optical waveform display and measurement, respectively.

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Why is it important?

From the viewpoint of engineering applications, there is a need of systematic design for constructing the whole optical waveform sampling system. In particular, its feasible implementation based on commercially available photonic devices is highly desired by optics/optical telecom researchers who plan to self−build up cost−effective optical waveform sampling systems at their respective laboratories rather than purchasing such sampling systems which are commercially available only from a few companies worldwide. Moreover, the practical selection of a repetition rate for optical sampling sources also needs to be considered. In this paper, we investigate into the new implementation of a cost−effective optical sampling system with subpicosecond temporal resolution for optical waveform monitoring.

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