Compression of periodic optical pulses without propagation in dispersive delay line

Summary form only given. Conventional optical pulse compression is accomplished in two stages: first by performing quadratic phase modulation of the pulses and then propagating the modulated pulses through a dispersive delay line. We demonstrate a novel method of periodic pulse compression that does not require propagation of the pulses in a dispersive delay line. This method is based on the use of pulse repetition rate multiplication, and can be explained with the help of the temporal Talbot effect. The pulses were generated from cw radiation of a tunable laser diode. The phase modulated light was reflected from the fiber Bragg gratings and a circulator directed it to the measuring equipment. To obtain the desired pulses, fine tuning was required for the laser wavelength, the modulation frequency and the modulation index. Pulses obtained (with a rate multiplication M = 4) using four fiber Bragg gratings are shown. The original pulse repetition rate and modulation index were 6.25 GHz and 3.3 rad, respectively.