Fig. 3
Schematic representation and performance of the optical buffer. a Experimental setup of the optical buffer, which generates multiple high-fidelity replicas of arbitrary signals under test (SUTs) with fine-tunable period for subsequent stroboscopic signal acquisition. A SUT will be loaded into the buffer through the 50/50 coupler, and one replica will be generated when the SUT is circulated for each cavity round trip. b The output waveform when an arbitrary SUT is optically buffered for 10 times. c–e Three examples of buffering performance using distinct SUTs. Ten replicas are overlapping together (grey curve) and compared to their average (blue). f Quantitative characterization of the buffering performance using 20 different SUTs. Each column set in purple represents the cross-correlation coefficient between the replica after different times of buffering and the original waveform (first replica). The average values among 20 examples are shown by blue triangles, showing a fidelity loss of less than 1% after ten times of buffering. AM amplitude modulator, EDF erbium-doped fibre, PC polarization controller, WDM wavelength-division multiplexer
