From femtosecond infrared to picosecond visible pulses: temporal shaping with high-efficiency conversion

We present a single-pass frequency doubler that efficiently converts broadband near-infrared femtosecond pulses into narrow-spectrum visible picosecond pulses. An optimal control technique is introduced for properly designing aperiodically poled nonlinear crystals to generate visible pulses of the desired amplitude, phase profile, and carrier wavelength. (c) 2007 Optical Society of America.