Abstract

We show that repetition rate multiplication of a periodic pulse train through the temporal Talbot effect is not limited to first-order dispersive media but can also be observed in the presence of higher-order dispersive terms. We derive the equations and the conditions that generalize the Talbot effect to an arbitrary dispersive medium, and present numerical simulations confirming our theoretical predictions. In addition, we calculate the cross-correlation coefficient to examine if the conditions we have derived are exhaustive for the case of a single dispersion order present. These results provide an extended degree of flexibility in designing all-pass (phase-only) optical filters for pulse rate multiplication.

© 2006 Optical Society of America

General temporal self-imaging phenomena

José Azaña and Lawrence R. Chen
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 20(7) 1447-1458 (2003)

Temporal self-imaging effects for periodic optical pulse sequences of finite duration

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J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 20(1) 83-90 (2003)

Spectral self-imaging phenomena in sampled Bragg gratings

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Timing jitter smoothing by Talbot effect. I. Variance

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J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 21(6) 1170-1177 (2004)

Complete family of periodic Talbot filters for pulse repetition rate multiplication

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Opt. Express 14(10) 4270-4279 (2006)