Fiber-based programmable ultrafast optical pulse shapers

鉴于科学和技术方面对加强加拿大日益重要的超快光子学领域的研究和培训的兴趣是毋庸置疑的，三位共同申请者最近在INRS-EMT建立了一个强有力的研究计划，专注于基础技术开发，即提出和演示用于超快光脉冲成形的简单实用的光纤技术，该技术能够提供各种领域中许多相关应用所需的严格性能规格，包括(1)超高速光纤通信；(2)生物医学成像；(3)超高速全光计算；以及(4)超宽带(UWB)微波信号产生和处理。目标光纤脉冲整形技术的两个主要显著特征是：(I)它们将能够合成具有精确到亚皮秒范围的时间特征的任意脉冲波形，这是当前全光纤脉冲整形技术所无法达到的；以及(Ii)它们将在GHz范围内以前所未有的切换速度提供完全的形状到形状的可重构性(比目前的解决方案快几个数量级)。新提出的光纤脉冲整形工具包将使用两种基于光纤色散与电光调制相结合的替代方法来构建：(A)时间成像；(B)时间域线性光学滤波。

Given the unquestionable scientific and technological interest in strengthening research and training in the increasingly important area of Ultrafast Photonics in Canada, the three co-applicants have recently established at INRS-EMT a vigorous research program focused on a fundamental technology development, namely the proposal and demonstration of simple and practical fiber-optics techniques for ultrafast optical pulse shaping capable of providing the stringent performance specifications that are required for many relevant applications in a variety of fields, including (1) ultrahigh-speed fiber-optics telecommunications; (2) biomedical imaging; (3) ultrafast all-optical computing; and (4) ultra-wideband (UWB) microwave signal generation and processing. The two main distinctive features of the target fiber-optics pulse shaping techniques are: (i) they will enable synthesizing arbitrary pulse waveforms with time features down to the sub-picosecond range, a regime that is well beyond the reach of present all-fiber pulse shaping technologies; and (ii) they will provide full shape-to-shape reconfigurability at unprecedented switching speeds, in the GHz range (several orders of magnitude faster than with present solutions). The newly proposed fiber-optics pulse shaping toolset will be constructed using two alternative approaches based on the use of optical fiber dispersion combined with electro-optic modulation: (A) Temporal imaging; and (B) Time-domain linear optical filtering.