Spectral polarization-encoding of broadband laser pulses by optical rotatory dispersion and its applications in spectral manipulation* *Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 92050203, 62075138, 61827815, and 61775142) and Shenzhen Fundamental Research Project (Grant Nos. JCYJ20190808164007485, JCYJ20190808121817100, JSGG20191231144201722, and JCYJ20190808115601653).

Abstract

We propose a kind of spectral polarization-encoding (SPE) for broadband light pulses, which is realized by inducing optical rotatory dispersion (ORD), and decoded by compensating ORD. Combining with polarization-sensitive devices, SPE can not only work to control polarization-dependent transmission for central wavelength or bandwidth-tunable filtering, but also can be used for broadband regenerative or multi-pass amplification with a polarization-dependent gain medium to improve output bandwidth. SPE is entirely passive thus very simple to be designed and aligned. By using an ORD crystal with a good transmission beyond 3-μm mid-infrared region, e.g., AgGaS2, SPE promises to be applied for the wavelength tuning lasers in mid-infrared region, where the tunning devices are rather under developed compared with those in visible and near-infrared region.