Hamamoto, M. Y.

Frequency-to-time optical arbitrary waveform generator

We introduce a novel optical arbitrary waveform generator that can create transform-limited ps-scale features over long (>300 ps) records. This has possible applications for controlling and/or mitigating laser–plasma interactions, laser machining, and studies of molecular dynamics. The technique works by patterning the spectrum of a short pulse and optically transforming this spectral pattern to the time domain via a χ (2) -based frequency-to-time converter. We derive the theory of operation and present experimental results showing 4 ps resolution and 330 ps record length.