Superfast scanning of space with phase-modulated laser radiation

A method is proposed and experimentally implemented for superfast scanning of space with chirped laser pulses. A chirped pulse incident on a diffracti on grating is expanded in space along one angular coordinate in accordance with the wavelength variation while the pulsewidth is simultaneously decrea sed in the propagation direction. In the method discussed here, the angular position of the object is determined from the position of the spectral max imum of the reflected radiation. It is shown that the angular coordinates a nd the size of objects can be determined. (C) 2001 The Optical Society of A merica.