Ultra-high extinction ratio optical pulse generation with a thin film lithium niobate modulator for distributed acoustic sensing

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate ultra-high extinction ratio (ER) optical pulse modulation with an electro-optical modulator (EOM) on thin film lithium niobate (TFLN) and its application for fiber optic distributed acoustic sensing (DAS). An interface carrier effect leading to a relaxation-tail response of TFLN EOM is discovered, which can be well addressed by a small compensation component following the main driving signal. An ultra-high ER > 50 dB is achieved by canceling out the tailed response during pulse modulation using the EOM based on a cascaded Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) structure. The modulated optical pulses are then utilized as a probe light for a DAS system, showing a sensitivity up to −62.9  dB  ⋅  rad/Hz2 (7 pε/√Hz) for 2-km single-mode sensing fiber. Spatial crosstalk suppression of 24.9 dB along the fiber is also obtained when the ER is improved from 20 dB to 50 dB, clearly revealing its importance to the sensing performance.