Abstract

We discuss the operation of a newly introduced system for phase and amplitude programmation of ultrafast laser pulses operating from a few femtoseconds to a few picoseconds.The heart of the system is an acousto-optic birefringent device , the Acousto-Optic Programmable Dispersive Filter (AOPDF) which performs for low values of acoustic power density a convolution between the amplitude of an input optical signal and a signal S(t/α) where S(t) is the acoustic signal proportional to the electrical signal applied to the piezoelectric transducer of the device and α a scaling factor related to the ratio between the speed of sound and the speed of light in the material. The small value of α of the order of 10⁻⁷ enables the control of optical signals in the hundreds of Terahertz range with electrical signal within the tens of Megahertz range [1,2].

© 2002 Optical Society of America