Abstract

Electro-optic sampling is a useful technique to study the electric field distribution in a GaAs microstrip circuit.[1] It has an extremely wide bandwidth capability and, can perform the measurement without physical or electrical contact to the device. However, most of the results of the experiments that had been reported were only point measurement; measuring the electric field at one particular point or discrete locations in the circuit. For some applications, this measurement does not provide adequate information. Two dimensional field distribution can be easily measured by electro-optic sampling because of its noncontact feature. W. Donaldson performed a 2-dimensional measurement with a 2-dimensional diode array[2]. After the polarized incoming light interacted with the electric field, the image of the reflected light which carried the field distribution information was focused on to a 2-dimensional diode array. The acquired data were then displayed on a computer monitor. This method has very good temporal resolution, but very low sensitivity. It requires a high power laser and can only measure strong electric field. These limit its application, making the method unsuitable for characterizing a regular GaAs device.

© 1991 Optical Society of America