Generation of high-quality parabolic pulses with optimized duration and energy by use of dispersive frequency-to-time mapping.

We propose and demonstrate a novel linear-optics method for high-fidelity parabolic pulse generation with durations ranging from the picosecond to the sub-nanosecond range. This method is based on dispersion-induced frequency-to-time mapping combined with spectral shaping in order to overcome constraints of previous linear shaping approaches. Temporal waveform distortions associated with the need to satisfy a far-field condition are eliminated by use of a virtual time-lens process, which is directly implemented in the linear spectral shaping stage. Using this approach, the generated parabolic pulses are able to maintain most energy spectrum available from the input pulse frequency bandwidth, regardless of the target pulse duration, which is not anymore limited by the finest spectral resolution of the optical pulse spectrum shaper. High-quality parabolic pulses, with durations from 25ps to 400ps and output powers exceeding 4dBm before amplification, have been experimentally synthesized from a picosecond mode-locked optical source using a commercial optical pulse shaper with a frequency resolution >10GHz. In particular, we report the synthesis of full-duty cycle parabolic pulses that match up almost exactly with an ideal fitting over the entire pulse period.