Femtosecond Pulse Shaping with Space-time Conversion Technique

The temporal pulse shape is given by Fourier transform of spatial pattern transferred from the phase and amplitude masks onto the spectrum. By changing the spectrum and the phase of an ultrafast pulse in space, the recombined laser pulse has controllable temporal shape in time. The shaped ultrafast pulse generation and characterization have been applied in the studies of ultrashort pulse code division multiple access (CDMA) communications, image processing in biomedicine, femtosecond chemistry etc. Some methods of femtosecond pulse shaping for time-to-space conversion of ultrafast optical waveforms are summarized.