Abstract
A novel phase-sensitive and polarization-sensitive scheme to implement an
optical low-coherence interferometry (OLCI) system is presented. With
respect to conventional phase-sensitive OLCI, in our system the interference
fringes of the coherent light used to recover phase information are
conveniently detected by the same photodetector acquiring the low-coherence
signal. This strategy guarantees the intrinsic synchronization of the two
signals at any acquisition speed, makes measurements more robust against
long-term fluctuations in the experimental setup, and reduces the
measurement time without affecting phase accuracy. The residual phase error
after the phase recovery procedure is less than 0.01 rad, to the authors'
knowledge one of the best results reported so far for OLCI measurements.
Polarization sensitivity is achieved in the same setup by means of
polarization selective retarders (PSRs) employed to couple light into and
out of the device under test. This scheme enables to retrieve the time and
frequency domain response of an optical device for both the polarization
states from a single data acquisition. The presented technique is extremely
versatile; it can be implemented by using either fiber or free space optics
and applied to the characterization of generic optical devices. Its
effectiveness is demonstrated by reporting the measurement of the amplitude
and phase response of integrated optical devices based on ring
resonators.
© 2009 IEEE
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