Investigation of Surface Optical Waves for Optical Signal Processing.
Abstract
Propagation and temporal compression of frequency-chirped CO2 laser pulses has been investigated, wherein a dispersive optical pulse delay line is formed using dispersive surface and bulk phonon-polariton propagation modes in solids. Criteria are developed for the compression of optical pulses, and these criteria are compared to the relevant group-dispersive properties of the propagation modes to determine their suitabilities for performing laser pulse compression. Absorption in the infrared-active medium has been shown to limit the magnitude of group dispersion available, in addition to limiting the attenuation length of each propagation mode. For the materials considered, absorption limits the application of this approach to CO2 laser pulses having initial widths of 10 psec or smaller with initial chirp bandwidths in the THz range, if attenuation by absorption is to be limited to 50 dB. Both the narrow pulse width and large chirp bandwidth requirements preclude experimental demonstration with present CO2 laser technology.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 1977
- Accession Number
- ADA042530
Entities
People
- D. L. Mills
- J. D. Mcmullen