All-optical sampling with a monolithically integrated Mach-Zehnder interferometer gate.

An all-optical sampler consisting of a polarization-independent monolithic Mach–Zehnder interferometer with integrated semiconductor optical amplifiers and a temporal resolution of 1  ps is presented. As an example, a simple 320‐Gbit/s pattern has been successfully sampled, demonstrating the functionality of this scheme for high-bit-rate waveform characterizations in light-wave systems.