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Silicon photonics

Silicon's time lens

How can we capture ultrafast optical signals in real time? A time lens is one possibility — able to image the temporal profile of a short optical signal, analogous to a conventional lens. Such a device has now been created on a silicon chip.

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Figure 1: Temporal imaging for measurement of ultrafast optical waveforms.
Figure 2: Photonic time-stretch (PTS) system slows down ultrafast electronic signals for digital acquisition.

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Jalali, B., Solli, D. & Gupta, S. Silicon's time lens. Nature Photon 3, 8–10 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2008.261

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