This very useful optical sampling system uses a passively mode-locked fiber laser as an optical sampling pulse source and is based on sum-frequency generation. The optical pulse had a sufficiently short pulse width, and its peak power was very high. In addition, it had a very low timing jitter. We could observe optical signals that were jitter-free in terms of single scanning. The sum-frequency generation conversion efficiency was 1.0 10-4 W-1, and the temporal resolution was 700 fs, when we used a 5-mm-thick KTP crystal. A 320-Gbit/s optical signal could be clearly observed. We have also developed a polarization-insensitive optical sampling system with a two-path configuration based on sum-frequency generation using the type-II phase matching condition in a KTP crystal. The polarization dependency was less than 3.5% (0.15 dB) in the wavelength range from 1520 to 1620 nm.

We investigate the relaxation oscillation characteristics of an actively mode-locked fiber laser and a novel stabilizing method of the laser theoretically and experimentally. The stabilizing method controls cavity length to suppress the rf power of the relaxation oscillation frequency of the laser output, and can directly monitor the stability of the laser to ensure the most stable operation. With this method, the rf power ratio between mode-locking frequency and the background noise can be kept to more than 70 dB, and highly stable transform-limited pulse generation is achieved. Bit-error-free operation at 6. 3 GHz over 10 hours is successfully demonstrated. The stability of the center wavelength of the laser output and the required accuracy of cavity control for high-speed laser operation are also discussed.