SUBPICOSECOND PULSE SHAPING VIA SPECTRAL HOLE-BURNING

A new method of Fourier synthesis of arbitrary pulse amplitudes on ult rafast time scale is demonstrated. Spectral hole structures are burnt in the 150 cm-1 broad inhomogeneous absorption band of a standard hole burning material as holographic gratings. The desired pulse shapes ar e then produced via diffraction of spectrally very broad 200 fs pulses by these spectrally and spatially prepared samples. The shaping of bo th, periodic and predefined aperiodic fs pulse trains as well as singl e fs pulses with predefined time delay are demonstrated.