Extinction ratio enhancement by sinusoidal phase modulation and nonlinear spectral focusing

We propose a new approach to enhance the extinction ratio of a pulse impaired by a coherent continuous-wave background. Taking advantage of a sinusoidal phase modulation followed by a nonlinear spectral focusing and an optical bandpass filtering, we are able to significantly decrease the level of the unwanted background. The principle of the method is experimentally validated at telecommunication wavelengths.