Abstract

One of the fundamental advantages of laser technology is the potential of high response speed because of the very high frequency nature of the light. A visible light of wavelength 0.5 micrometer has the frequency of 600 THz, or the period of 1.7 fs. Actually the light pulse of 6 fs was obtained by pulse compression techniques in 1989 and direct emission of 10 fs pulses from mode-locked solid state laser was achieved more recently. Its application to very high speed measurements opened a new realm of science and technology because no other physical means are available to investigate the phenomena in femto-second region. Specifically the electro-optic sampling is a promising technique for the characterization of high speed electron devices and integrated circuits. Although the history of this method is already fifteen years old now, the practical instrumentation only appeared in the past two years, coinciding with the time when fiber-optic networks of 10 Gbit/s and beyond as well as microwave and millimeter wave integrated circuits became vigorously investigated. The present review intends to summarize the fundamental advantage of this method, to scan the recent achievements, and to discuss the future potential of further jump.

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