Simultaneous Temporal Characterization of Telecommunication Optical Pulses and Modulators Using Spectrograms
01 January 2002
We demonstrate a simple technique for simultaneous and complete characterization of the optical pulses and temporal modulators commonly used in telecommunication. The electric field of a pulse and the response of a modulator are obtained from the time-frequency analysis of the two-dimensional spectrogram of the pulse gated by the modulator. The measurement sensitivity is greatly improved compared to the conventional nonlinear optical gating techniques. Trains of picosecond pulses as weak as 10 sup -17 J are accurately characterized using an electro-absorption modulator as the temporal gate. The time-resolved amplitude and phase switching characteristics of the modulator are also presented.