Characterization of high-speed electro-optic phase modulators based on heterodyne carrier mapping at a fixed low-frequency

A self-referenced method based on heterodyne carrier mapping is proposed to characterize the modulation efficiency of high-speed electro-optic phase modulators (EOPMs). The heterodyne carrier mapping replicates the optical carrier after phase modulation to an electrical replica, which enables observing the power variation of the optical carrier at a fixed low-frequency in the electrical domain. The modulation depths and half-wave voltages within the frequency range of up to 40 GHz are determined by measuring the amplitude ratio of the mapped low-frequency component at 80 MHz in the cases of on and off single-tone modulation of the EOPM. The measured results are compared to those obtained with the traditional optical spectrum analysis method and the electrical spectrum sweep method to check the consistency and accuracy. Surpassing the heterodyne spectrum mapping (HSM) scheme, our method only requires a single-tone driving of the EOPM under test and completely avoids the roll-off responsivity of the photodetector through the fixed low-frequency detection. (c) 2023 Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Optica Open Access Publishing Agreement