Designer femtosecond pulse shaping using grating-engineered quasi-phase-matching in lithium niobate

The generation of tailored femtosecond pulses with fully engineered intensity and phase profiles is demonstrated using second-harmonic generation of an Er:fiber laser in an aperiodically poled lithium niobate crystal in the undepleted pump regime. Second-harmonic pulse shapes, including Gaussian, stepped, square, and multiple pulses have been characterized using cross-correlation frequency-resolved optical gating and have been shown to agree well with theory. (C) 2008 Optical Society of America.