Amplified Dispersive Fourier-Transform Imaging for Ultrafast Displacement Sensing and Barcode Reading

摘要

Dispersive Fourier transformation is a powerful technique in which thespectrum of an optical pulse is mapped into a time-domain waveform usingchromatic dispersion. It replaces a diffraction grating and detector array witha dispersive fiber and single photodetector. This simplifies the system and,more importantly, enables fast real-time measurements. Here we describe a novelultrafast barcode reader and displacement sensor that employsinternally-amplified dispersive Fourier transformation. This techniqueamplifies and simultaneously maps the spectrally encoded barcode into atemporal waveform. It achieves a record acquisition speed of 25 MHz -- fourorders of magnitude faster than the current state-of-the-art.