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Single-shot measurement of few-cycle optical waveforms on a chip

Nature Photonics volume 16, pages 109–112 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

The measurement of transient optical fields has proven critical to understanding the dynamical mechanisms underlying ultrafast physical and chemical phenomena, and is key to realizing higher speeds in electronics and telecommunications. However, complete characterization of optical waveforms requires an ‘optical oscilloscope’ capable of resolving the electric-field oscillations with sub-femtosecond resolution and with single-shot operation. Here we show that strong-field nonlinear excitation of photocurrents in a silicon-based image sensor chip can provide the sub-cycle optical gate necessary to characterize carrier-envelope phase-stable optical waveforms in the mid-infrared. By mapping the temporal delay between an intense excitation and weak perturbing pulse onto a transverse spatial coordinate of the image sensor, we show that the technique allows single-shot measurement of few-cycle waveforms.

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Fig. 1: Experimental set-up and principle of single-shot measurement.
Fig. 2: Single-image characterization of a few-cycle pulse.
Fig. 3: Determination of the carrier-envelope phase.
Fig. 4: Complete characterization of laser waveforms.

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Data availability

The data that supports the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available at https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/preview.cgi?article=1001&context=datasets.

Code availability

The codes that produced the modelled data within this paper and other findings of this study are available at https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/preview.cgi?article=1001&context=datasets.

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Acknowledgements

This material is based primarily on research supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under award no. FA9550-20-1-0284. S.G.-M. was supported by the Army Research Office under award no. W911NF-19-1-0211. We thank Z. Chang for helpful discussions and for loaning the PbSe spectrometer used to measure the mid-infrared spectra.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

    Yangyang Liu, John E. Beetar, Jonathan Nesper, Shima Gholam-Mirzaei & Michael Chini

  2. Joint Attosecond Science Laboratory (JASLab), National Research Council of Canada and University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    Shima Gholam-Mirzaei

  3. CREOL, The College of Optics and Photonics, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

    Michael Chini

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  1. Yangyang Liu
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Contributions

M.C. had the idea for the single-shot waveform measurement scheme and oversaw the research team. Y.L. led the experimental effort and performed most of the measurements and simulations. J.E.B. assisted with the measurements of the carrier-envelope phase dependence. J.N. and S.G.-M. assisted with the construction of the experimental set-up and with the data collection. All authors contributed to data analysis and the creation of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Michael Chini.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Photonics thanks Nicholas Karpowicz, Gerhard Paulus and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Notes 1–5, Figs. 1–14 and Table 1.

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Liu, Y., Beetar, J.E., Nesper, J. et al. Single-shot measurement of few-cycle optical waveforms on a chip. Nat. Photon. 16, 109–112 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-021-00924-6

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