All-optical high speed sampling based on nonlinear polarization rotation in a semiconductor optical amplifier

A novel all-optical high speed sampling method using nonlinear polarization rotation (NPR) in a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is proposed in this paper. Using the carrier rate equation in a SOA for the propagation of an optical pulse, a model is proposed to describe the relationship between the polarization rotating angles of probe light and the pump light power. Meantime, affection introduced by the initial polarization of the probe light, as well as the injected current of the SOA is studied. The numerical results indicated that the initial polarization of the probe light affects the transfer curve between the output light power of probe light and the pump light power, and the injected current of SOA could affect the linearly dynamic range and the rise slope of the transfer curve. In order to obtain suitable slope and larger linear dynamic range, the parameters are optimized. The primarily simulated results indicated that the pump light power is not more than 1mW. It is also shown that the all-optical sampling mentioned in this paper has promoting potential to improve the sampling rate at hundreds GS/s and needs considerable lower optical power than others.