Reconfigurable photonic temporal differentiator based on a dual-drive Mach-Zehnder modulator.

We propose and demonstrate a reconfigurable photonic temporal differentiator based on a dual drive Mach-Zehnder modulator (DDMZM). The differentiator can be reconfigured to different differentiation types by simply adjusting the bias voltage of DDMZM. Both simulations and experiments are carried out to verify the proposed scheme. In the experiment, a pair of polarity-reversed field differentiation and a pair of polarity-reversed intensity differentiation are successfully generated. The differentiation accuracy and conversion efficiency versus the time delay are also investigated.