Abstract

An all-optical waveform sampling system with simultaneous submilliwatt optical signal sensitivity (20-dB signal-to-noise ratio) and subpicosecond temporal resolution over more than 60-nm optical bandwidth is demonstrated in this paper. 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. This paper also presents a summary of the available methods to achieve polarization-independent optical sampling as well as a brief summary of the available sampling pulse sources viable for optical sampling.

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