Abstract
Ultrafast lasers enable a wide range of physics research and the manipulation of short pulses is a critical part of the ultrafast tool kit. Current methods of laser pulse shaping are usually considered separately in either the spatial or the temporal domain, but laser pulses are complex entities existing in four dimensions, so full freedom of manipulation requires advanced forms of spatiotemporal control. We demonstrate through a combination of adaptable diffractive and reflective optical elements - a liquid crystal spatial light modulator (SLM) and a deformable mirror (DM) - decoupled spatial control over the pulse front (temporal group delay) and phase front of an ultra-short pulse was enabled. Pulse front modulation was confirmed through autocorrelation measurements. This new adaptive optics technique, for the first time enabling in principle arbitrary shaping of the pulse front, promises to offer a further level of control for ultrafast lasers.
Highlights
Ultrafast lasers have become integral to many areas of experimental science, from nonlinear microscopy [1] to ultrafast spectroscopy [2], laser micro-fabrication [3], and quantum optics [4] to name a few
Achromatic doublets were used throughout the system to minimize the system-induced pulse front distortions, enabling us to explore the pulse front solely created by the adaptive optics elements
There was an obvious broadening of the autocorrelation trace when the equal and opposite phase shapes were applied to the spatial light modulator (SLM) and deformable mirror (DM), demonstrating the presence of pulse front delay
Summary
Ultrafast lasers have become integral to many areas of experimental science, from nonlinear microscopy [1] to ultrafast spectroscopy [2], laser micro-fabrication [3], and quantum optics [4] to name a few. Adaptive optics has been extensively employed to maintain a perfect phase front by counteracting any aberrations introduced into a system, with an associated improvement in resolution and efficiency of the target process [5,6,7,8,9] In addition to these phase aberrations, distortions to the laser pulse front (contour of constant intensity) can be introduced by the optical system [10,11,12,13]. This form of distortion arises from variation in group delay (GD) across the beam profile with a consequent spreading of the arrival times of pulses at the target. The potential applications for this new adaptive optics method are discussed
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