Femtosecond pulse shaping is now an established technology for generating nearly arbitrarily shaped ultrafast optical signals, with applications ranging from high-speed communications to coherent control of photochemical reactions. On the other hand, generation of user defined arbitrary waveforms in lower frequency regions remains a challenge. Commercial electronic arbitrary waveform generators (AWGs) are available only up to 1 GHz. In this talk I review our work on down-converting shaped femtosecond pulses into electromagnetic waveforms in the millimeter-wave, THz, and mid-infrared spectral regions. This down-conversion approach offers the possibility of extending the waveform control and stability offered with femtosecond optical lasers into other frequency regions.
展开▼
