Title :
Heterodyne detection of optical terahertz beat-tones based on semiconductor optical amplifier
Author :
Philippe, Séverine ; Maldonado-Basilio, Ramon ; Latkowski, Sylwester ; Landais, Pascal
Author_Institution :
RINCE Inst., Dublin City Univ., Dublin, Ireland
Abstract :
In this paper, a detection scheme based on four wave mixing in a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is used to measure the frequency and bandwidth of the optical terahertz beat-tone signal generated by a passively mode locked semiconductor laser. Two signals from external cavity lasers are injected into an SOA, which acts as a local oscillator at their detuning frequency. The device under test is a passively mode locked laser with a beat-tone frequency in the terahertz spectrum. Its optical signal is injected in the SOA, which also acts as a frequency mixer. The frequency and linewidth of the terahertz signal are then measured by retrieving the intermediate frequency detected by a low bandwidth photodiode and an electrical spectrum analyser.
Keywords :
heterodyne detection; laser mode locking; multiwave mixing; photodiodes; semiconductor optical amplifiers; electrical spectrum analyser; external cavity lasers; four wave mixing; frequency mixer; heterodyne detection; low bandwidth photodiode; optical terahertz beat-tones; passively mode locked semiconductor laser; semiconductor optical amplifier; Frequency measurement; Frequency modulation; Optical mixing; Semiconductor optical amplifiers; four wave mixing; multimode semiconductor laser; semiconductor optical amplifier heterodyning detection; terahertz;
Conference_Titel :
Transparent Optical Networks (ICTON), 2011 13th International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Stockholm
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4577-0881-7
Electronic_ISBN :
2161-2056
DOI :
10.1109/ICTON.2011.5970920