Picosecond pulse shaping by spectral phase and amplitude manipulation

The temporal profile of ultrashort optical pulses may be tailored by physically manipulating the phase and the amplitude of frequency components that are spatially dispersed within a grating pulse compressor. Arbitrary pulse shapes may be synthesized subject only to the usual restrictions imposed by finite bandwidth and spatial resolution. We demonstrate this technique by generating a burst of evenly spaced picosecond pulses, a pulse doublet with odd field symmetry, and a burst of evenly spaced pulse doublets with odd field symmetry.