Super-resolution of ultrafast pulses via spectral inversion

The resolution limits of classical spectroscopy can be surpassed by quantum-inspired methods leveraging the information contained in the phase of the complex electromagnetic field. Their counterpart in spatial imaging has been widely discussed and demonstrated; however, the spectral-domain implementations are few and scarce. We experimentally demonstrate a spectroscopic super-resolution method aimed at broadband light (10s to 100s of GHz), and based on the spectral-domain analog of image inversion interferometry. In a proof-of-principle experiment, we study the paradigmatic problem of estimating a small separation between two incoherent spectral features of equal brightness, with a small number of photons per coherence time. On the grounds of asymptotic estimation theory, more than a 2-fold improvement over the spectral direct imaging is demonstrated in terms of required resources (photons) for a given estimator variance. The setup is based on an actively stabilized Mach-Zehnder-type interferometer with electro-optic time lenses and passive spectral dispersers implementing the inversion. As such, the method promises on-chip integration, good scalability, and further applications e. g. for mode sorting.