An Interferometric Method for High Extinction Ratio Measurements With 60-dB Dynamic Range

In this letter, we introduce a novel interferometric method for dynamic extinction ratio measurement of temporally demultiplexed pulses. A high extinction intensity modulator is used in order to temporally demultiplex the pulse train. The resulting extinction ratio is measured to be 44 dB. Our method has a dynamic range of ~60 dB. To our knowledge, this is the highest dynamic extinction ratio measurement method reported to date for high-speed optical modulators.