We show that light pulses can be stopped and stored coherently, with an all-optical adiabatic and reversible pulse bandwidth compression process. Such a process overcomes the fundamental bandwidth-delay constraint in optics and can generate arbitrarily small group velocities for any light pulse with a given bandwidth, without any coherent or resonant light-matter interactions. We exhibit this p...

The self-sustained discharge of excimers is analyzed. Several excitation schemes that have been successfully applied are compared. For high repetition rate operation not only the discharge stability and its efficiency are important selection criteria but more important is the potential of fast discharge switching with minimum pulse energy. Pulse compression plays a key role in the laser perform...

We have demonstrated the generation of 5 fs, 0.5 TW pulses at 1 kHz repetition rate using a pulse compression technique in a hollow fiber with a pressure gradient. Owing to the excellent beam quality by passing through the hollow fiber, the beam after pulse compression could be focused to a nearly diffraction-limited spot size. We obtained for the first time a peak intensity as high as 5x10(18)...

The compression of 300-fs-long, chirp-free laser pulses at 527 nm down to 30 fs is reported. The laser pulses, originated from a frequency-doubled, mode-locked Nd:glass laser, were compressed by a 0.7-m-long, 150-microm-bore-diameter, argon-filled hollow fiber, and a pair of SF10 prisms with a final energy of 160 microJ. These are the shortest, high energy pulses ever produced by direct pulse c...

Two related data compression methods for radar signals are described and analyzed. The methods use the singular value decomposition (SVD) of a data matrix containing one pulse in each row to exploit pulseto-pulse redundancy. By using a rank-one approximation to the data matrix it is possible to achieve compression ratios typically of the order of several 10’s and sometimes over 150:1 for typica...

First we review the theory of active pulse compression systems using resonant delay lines. Then we describe the design of an electrically controlled semiconductor active switch. The switch comprises an active window and an overmoded waveguide three-port network. The active window is based on a four-inch silicon wafer which has 960 PIN diodes. These are spatially combined in an overmoded wavegui...

Projected demands in information bandwidth have resulted in a paradigm shift from electrical to optical interconnects. Switches, modulators and wavelength converters have all been demonstrated on complementary metal-oxide semiconductor compatible platforms, and are important for all optical signal and information processing. Similarly, pulse compression is crucial for creating short pulses nece...

We demonstrate a scheme for nonlinear pulse compression at high average powers based on self-phase modulation in a multi-pass cell using fused silica as the nonlinear medium. The scheme is suitable for compression of pulses with peak powers exceeding the threshold for critical self-focusing. At >400  W of input power, the pulses of a Yb:YAG-Innoslab laser system (10 MHz repetition rate, 850 fs ...

Thermal non-destructive testing and evaluation of glass fibre reinforced plastic materials has gained more importance in aerospace industry due to low weight and high strength capabilities in severe environmental conditions. More recently, pulse compression favorable non-stationary excitation schemes have been exhibiting reliable defect detection capabilities in infrared non-destructive testing...