Generation of femtosecond pulse sequences in the ultraviolet by spectral phase modulation

Abstract

We employ a 128-pixel liquid-crystal spatial light modulator to generate variable pulse sequences from a titanium-sapphire femtosecond laser amplifier system centered at 800 nm. By applying phase modulations based on triangular-shaped spectral phase patterns, pulse sequences can be generated whose overall spectrum is still conserved but whose subpulses differ in their spectral composition. We further use nonlinear crystals to analyze the shape of these pulses after frequency conversion. Our experiments show that it is possible to transfer these pulse sequences into the ultraviolet at central wavelengths of 400 nm and 267 nm without losing the ability to spectrally distinguish between the femtosecond subpulses. This is affirmed by measurements using cross-correlation and XFROG (cross-correlation frequency resolved optical gating) techniques with an unmodulated laser pulse. Simulations of the experiments are performed for comparison. We also discuss promising applications in spectroscopy or information encoding.