Ultrafast beam shaping with high-numerical-aperture microscope objectives

Abstract

Ultrafast diffraction results in spatiotemporal un-coupling of the wave field, inducing spectral anomalies and pulse stretching. Localized compensation may be achieved via angular dispersion driven by diffractive optical elements (DOEs). We report on an DOEs-based beam shaper of ultrashort optical pulses with high spatiotemporal resolution. Inspection of the validity of our approach is performed in the single-cycle regime.