Programmable femtosecond pulse shaping and processing

Summary form old given. The field of femtosecond pulse shaping, in which Fourier synthesis methods are used to generate nearly arbitrarily shaped ultrafast optical waveforms according to user specification, will be reviewed. An emphasis is placed on programmable pulse shaping methods based on the use of spatial light modulators. After the fundamental principles of pulse shaping are outlined, examples of pulse shaping using several different types of spatial light modulators will be described. Applications of pulse shaping will be illustrated by drawing on experimental results in fields ranging from quantum control to optical communications. Finally, some new research directions in pulse shaping and in ultrafast optical signal processing based on nonlinear extensions of pulse shaping will be described.