Synthesis of crafted optical pulses by time domain modulation in a fiber-grating compressor

Abstract

We report a method for direct generation of voltage programmable, arbitrarily shaped laser pulses of subpicosecond duration and roughly 100 fs resolution. A waveguide intensity modulator was fabricated and incorporated into a fiber-grating pulse compressor to shape temporally the chirped pulse before compression. Optical pulses with sin(x)/x and square envelopes are synthesized to demonstrate the technique.