Letter abstract
Nature Photonics 1, 463 - 467 (2007)
Published online: 1 August 2007 | doi:10.1038/nphoton.2007.139
Subject Category: Ultrafast photonics
Optical arbitrary waveform processing of more than 100 spectral comb lines
Zhi Jiang1,2, Chen-Bin Huang1,2, Daniel E. Leaird1 & Andrew M. Weiner1
Abstract
Pulse-shaping techniques, in which user-specified, ultrashort-pulse fields are synthesized by means of parallel manipulation of optical Fourier components, have now been widely adopted1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Mode-locked lasers producing combs of frequency-stabilized spectral lines have resulted in revolutionary advances in frequency metrology7, 8, 9, 10, 11. However, until recently, pulse shapers addressed spectral lines in groups, at low spectral resolution. Line-by-line pulse shaping12, in which spectral lines are resolved and manipulated individually, leads to a fundamentally new regime for optical arbitrary waveform generation13, in which the advantages of pulse shaping and of frequency combs are exploited simultaneously. Here we demonstrate programmable line-by-line shaping of more than 100 spectral lines, which constitutes a significant step in scaling towards high waveform complexity. Optical arbitrary waveform generation promises to have an impact both in optical science (allowing, for example, coherent control generalizations of comb-based time–frequency spectroscopies10) and in technology (enabling new truly coherent multiwavelength processing concepts for spread-spectrum lightwave communications and light detection and ranging, lidar).
- School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, 465 Northwestern Avenue, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907-2035, USA
- These authors contributed equally to this work.
Correspondence to: Andrew M. Weiner1 e-mail: amw@ecn.purdue.edu
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