Optical pulse-shaping using ultrafast phase transformation in vanadium dioxide

摘要

A semiconductor-to-metal phase transition in vanadium dioxide results in a huge change of optical refractive index. Only a picojoule of the incident laser energy is required for this phase transition to happen, and the time scale of this transformation is very short - semiconductor becomes metal within the first 100-fs. In this report we utilize this phase transformation to dramatically modify the shape of the incident laser pulse.