Impact of nonlinearity including bleaching in MUTC photodetectors on RF-modulated electro-optic frequency combs

We use the drift-diffusion equations to calculate the responsivity of a modified uni-traveling carrier (MUTC) photodetector (PD) with a frequency comb input that is generated by a series of short optical pulses. We first use experimental results for the responsivity of the MUTC PD to obtain an empirical model of bleaching in pulsed mode. We incorporate our empirical bleaching model into a drift-diffusion model to calculate the impact of nonlinearity in an MUTC PD on RF-modulated electro-optic frequency combs. We quantify the nonlinearity using the second- and third-order intermodulation distortion powers (IMD2 and IMD3), from which we calculate the second- and third-order output intercept points (OIP2 and OIP3). In contrast to a continuous wave (CW) input for which there is a single IMD2 and IMD3 and hence a single OIP2 and OIP3, each comb line n has its own IMD2(n), IMD3(n), OIP2(n), and OIP3(n) associated with it. We determine the IMD2(n), IMD3(n), OIP2(n), and OIP3(n), and we compare the results with and without bleaching. We find that the impact of bleaching is complex and, somewhat surprisingly, not always detrimental. The principal effect of bleaching is to lower the responsivity, which decreases the nonlinearity due to space charge. While bleaching always reduces the OIP2(n) and OIP3(n), we find that bleaching leads to a decreased distortion-to-signal ratio for large n. (C) 2021 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement