Abstract

The two most common ways of producing ultrashort electrical pulses in transmission lines are photoconductivity¹ and optical rectification.² Fhotoconductive switches are limited by the recombination times of the photo-generated carriers in the material, leading to pulses of around I ps. Optical rectification, being a nonlinear effect, has the potential to generate sub-picosecond electrical pulses. This paper describes the results obtained from a device designed to generate an electrical signal using optical rectification at an input wavelength in the 1.55 μm telecommunications window. A complete theoretical analysis of optical rectification on GaAs waveguides can be found in.³

© 2002 Optical Society of America