A simple technique for the direct measurement of the complex temporal response of a high-speed electro-optic (EO) modulator is proposed. This technique recovers the amplitude and phase temporal profiles of an instantaneous modulation over the duration of a chirped pulse (obtained by linear dispersion) using Fourier-transform interferometry, and it exploits the time-to-frequency mapping induced by the pulse dispersion process. The method can be implemented by using either time- or frequency-domain interferometric detection, allowing the characterization of modulation bandwidths in the tens-of-gigahertz range. The concept is demonstrated by accurately measuring the complex temporal response of a 2.5 Gbps intensity EO modulator.
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