Abstract

There has been considerable attention recently regarding the shaping of ultrashort optical pulses into waveforms with arbitrary temporal profiles [1-3]. Applications to ultrafast optical switching [2] and coherent control of quantum mechanical systems have been demonstrated [3] and further results can be anticipated. Optical processing of shaped waveforms and their interconversion to and from spatial images have also been reported [4,5]. More recently, ultrafast time-varying two-dimensional spatial images have been generated using volume holographic techniques [6]. Here we demonstrate combined temporal and spatial shaping of ultrashort optical pulses based on linear spectral filtering of spatially separated frequency components [1-3]. This permits generation of coherent high-fidelity ultrashort optical waveforms with tailored profiles along both the propagation direction, i.e. the temporal coordinate, and one perpendicular direction, i.e. one spatial coordinate. Temporal and spatial pulse shaping offers novel possibilties for manipulation of propagating excitations and other non-local material responses, and permits a very large multiplex advantage in terahertz-bandwidth optical signal generation.

© 1996 Optical Society of America