High-speed electrooptic deflector and its application to picosecond pulse generation

New types of electrooptic deflectors with high speed and high efficiency, which are useful for ultrafast optical switching and ultrashort optical pulse generation, are described. These deflectors are driven by an X-band standing wave along the microstrip line on an electrooptic crystal. A time-varying spatial slope of the refractive index is induced in the crystal by the electric standing wave. As a result, the ultrafast deflection is carried out. The operation of such deflectors constructed on a LiTaO₃ crystal using a 514.5-nm CW argon laser and a 9.35-GHz driving frequency was confirmed experimentally. In addition, the optical pulse compression from CW to 9.35 GHz, 16 ps was carried out with a diffraction grating, and picking out the 18.7-GHz, 8-ps pulse train was also carried out using a slit as a temporal window