Research on optical sampling based on SOA's nonlinear polarization rotation

In this paper, we propose and demonstrate an optical sampling scheme based on nonlinear polarization rotation (NPR) effect of semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA), the sampled signal is a pulse with 20 GHz repetition rate and 420 fs pulse width generated by a mode-locked fiber ring laser constituted by SOA and electro-absorption modulator (EAM). The working principle of proposed sampling scheme has been studied, and the effect of various parameters on the system performance are discussed.