Electro-optic sensors for electric field measurements I Theoretical comparison among different modulation techniques

We present a complete analysis of electro-optic sensors for electric field measurement based on three different modulation techniques: amplitude, phase, and polarization state modulation. We treat the most general case, considering both isotropic and anisotropic crystals and taking into account the absorption of the crystal. We derive the optimal configuration of experimental setups for the three studied modulation techniques, and we give the values of the variable physical parameters required to yield the best performance. Finally we compare the three modulation techniques and show that phase or polarization state modulations result in exactly the same performance while amplitude modulation gives slightly enhanced performance.