Shaping optical pulses by amplitude and phase masking

摘要

Embodiments of the present invention control, manipulate and tailor the shape of input optical pulses to produce substantially transform-limited output pulses which can be shorter than the input pulses. In embodiments of a first aspect of the present invention an input optical pulse is chirped, the chirped pulse is then passed through an optical component that spatially disperses the frequency components of the chirped pulse and partially compensates the chirp, the spatially dispersed frequency components are then passed through spatial amplitude and/or phase masks that control and/or adjust the amplitude and/or phase of the frequency components, and, finally, the masked components are passed through the first or a second optical component that returns the masked, spatially dispersed frequency components substantially to the spatial distribution of the input pulse while substantially completing the compensation of the chirp to form an output pulse.