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Time stretch and its applications

Nature Photonics volume 11, pages 341–351 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Observing non-repetitive and statistically rare signals that occur on short timescales requires fast real-time measurements that exceed the speed, precision and record length of conventional digitizers. Photonic time stretch is a data acquisition method that overcomes the speed limitations of electronic digitizers and enables continuous ultrafast single-shot spectroscopy, imaging, reflectometry, terahertz and other measurements at refresh rates reaching billions of frames per second with non-stop recording spanning trillions of consecutive frames. The technology has opened a new frontier in measurement science unveiling transient phenomena in nonlinear dynamics such as optical rogue waves and soliton molecules, and in relativistic electron bunching. It has also created a new class of instruments that have been integrated with artificial intelligence for sensing and biomedical diagnostics. We review the fundamental principles and applications of this emerging field for continuous phase and amplitude characterization at extremely high repetition rates via time-stretch spectral interferometry.

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Figure 1: Digitizer bottlenecks and solutions via time stretch.
Figure 2: Building blocks of a time-stretch system.
Figure 3: Different dispersion devices.
Figure 4: Applications of time stretch.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to S. Bielawski at Universite des Sciences et Technologies de Lille, France for invaluable discussions on electron-beam diagnostics. We are also thankful to D. Solli at UCLA for helpful comments. The work at UCLA was partially supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Multidisciplinary University Research Initiatives (MURI) on Optical Computing and by NantWorks, LLC.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, 90095, California, USA

    Ata Mahjoubfar & Bahram Jalali

  2. California NanoSystems Institute, Los Angeles, 90095, California, USA

    Ata Mahjoubfar & Bahram Jalali

  3. Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies, Aston University, Birmingham, B4 7ET, UK

    Dmitry V. Churkin & Sergei K. Turitsyn

  4. Institute of Automation and Electrometry, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia

    Dmitry V. Churkin

  5. Novosibirsk State University, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia

    Dmitry V. Churkin & Sergei K. Turitsyn

  6. Universite de Nice - CNRS UMR 7335, Institut Non Lineaire de Nice, 1361 Route des Lucioles, 06560, Valbonne, France

    Stéphane Barland

  7. Department of Physics, Dodd Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Electronics, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, 1142, New Zealand

    Neil Broderick

  8. Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Los Angeles, 90095, California, USA

    Bahram Jalali

  9. Department of Surgery, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, 90095, California, USA

    Bahram Jalali

Authors
  1. Ata Mahjoubfar
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  2. Dmitry V. Churkin
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  3. Stéphane Barland
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  4. Neil Broderick
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  5. Sergei K. Turitsyn
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  6. Bahram Jalali
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bahram Jalali.

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Competing interests

B.J. is a co-founder of Time Photonics, the manufacturer of RogueScope, a single-shot spectrometer based on the time-stretch technique.

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Mahjoubfar, A., Churkin, D., Barland, S. et al. Time stretch and its applications. Nature Photon 11, 341–351 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2017.76

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