Electro-optic sampling (EOS) has advanced to an indispensable tool in various areas of optics, photonics and laser physics, including ultrafast pump-probe, time-domain and frequency-comb spectroscopies, quantum optics, high-harmonic generation, and attosecond science. In their recent paper [1], leaders in the field provide a review of the field, surveying the mode of operation as well as prominent applications of EOS of classical and quantum light.
In EOS, an optical test wave is sampled by means of a nonlinear mixing process with a variably-delayed ultrashort optical gate pulse. This mixing process is exemplified for the case of sum- and difference-frequency mixing in the picture. EOS yields the complete temporal evolution of the test wave, with amplitude and phase information. Nowadays, its detection range spans from the few-terahertz to the visible spectrum. At the Laboratory of Lightwave Metrology, EOS has set records for sensitivity and dynamic range of linear detection in the mid-infrared molecular fingerprint region , and has enabled field-resolved spectroscopy (FRS) with record waveform stability. It plays a central role in the application of FRS to biology and medicine.
Original publication:
[1] I.-C. Benea-Chelmus, J. Faist, A. Leitenstorfer, A. S. Moskalenko, I. Pupeza, D. V. Selenskiy, K. L. Vodopyanov, “Electro-optic sampling of classical and quantum light,” Optica 12, 546 (2025
https://doi.org/10.1364/OPTICA.544333