Incoherent frequency-to-time mapping: application to incoherent pulse shaping.

Area of Science:

• Optics and Photonics
• Quantum Optics

Background:

• Temporal amplitude modulation of spectrally incoherent optical sources leads to intensity profiles resembling spectral density.
• This phenomenon generalizes frequency-to-time mapping for partially coherent light.

Purpose of the Study:

• To demonstrate temporal intensity waveform generation using spectral filtering and temporal modulation of incoherent sources.
• To introduce and validate the 'full incoherent pulse shaping' technique.

Main Methods:

• Spectral filtering of an incoherent optical source prior to temporal modulation.
• Temporal amplitude modulation applied to the spectrally filtered incoherent source.
• Computer simulations for generating arbitrary picosecond pulses from amplified spontaneous emission sources.

Main Results:

• The average intensity profile of the output signal is shaped into a desired waveform.
• Intensity fluctuations in the shaped waveform are shown to be small in practical scenarios.
• Successful generation of arbitrary picosecond pulses from amplified spontaneous emission sources was simulated.

Conclusions:

• Full incoherent pulse shaping is a viable technique for generating controlled temporal intensity waveforms from incoherent light.
• The method provides a practical approach to optical pulse generation with manageable intensity fluctuations.
• The technique holds promise for applications requiring arbitrary picosecond pulse generation.