Femtosecond pulse shaping in two dimensions: Towards higher complexity optical waveforms

Abstract

We demonstrate a new Fourier pulse shaping apparatus capable of achieving simultaneous high resolution and broad bandwidth operation by dispersing frequency components in a two dimensional geometry through simultaneous use of a high resolution and a broad bandwidth spectral disperser. We show experimental results which demonstrate significant improvements in achievable waveform complexity (number of controllable temporal/spectral features). We also demonstrate experiments of line-by-line pulse shaping with optical frequency combs. In this regime our configuration would allow significant enhancement of the number of controllable spectral lines which may further enhance recently demonstrated massively parallel approaches to spectroscopic sensing using frequency combs.