Background-Suppressed Ultrafast Optical Sampling Using Nondegenerate Two-Photon Absorption in a GaAs Photodiode

Author

Apiratikul, Paveen ; Murphy, Thomas E.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

Volume

22

Issue

4

fYear

2010

Firstpage

212

Lastpage

214

Abstract

We describe an ultrafast optical sampling system that uses nondegenerate two-photon absorption (2PA) in a GaAs photodiode. By choosing the sampling pulses to have a photon energy below the half-bandgap, we successfully suppress the otherwise large photocurrent associated with 2PA of the strong sampling pulses. Using this approach, we demonstrate a background-suppressed measurement of quasi-4-Tb/s eye diagrams, with temporal resolution that is limited by the sampling pulsewidth.

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; energy gap; gallium arsenide; high-speed optical techniques; nonlinear optics; photoconductivity; photodetectors; photodiodes; sampling methods; two-photon processes; GaAs; background-suppressed measurement; bit rate 4 Tbit/s; eye diagrams; half-bandgap; nondegenerate two-photon absorption; nonlinear effect; photocurrent; photodetector; photodiode; photon energy; sampling pulsewidth; temporal resolution; ultrafast optical sampling system; Absorption; Fiber nonlinear optics; Gallium arsenide; Optical mixing; Optical pulses; Photoconductivity; Photodiodes; Sampling methods; Signal sampling; Ultrafast optics; Nonlinear detection; optical mixers; optical pulse measurements; p-i-n photodiodes; sampling methods; ultrafast optics;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2009.2037600

Filename

5393304