We report a novel method to continuously track the temporal evolution of an arbitrary complex waveform as it propagates through a group-velocity dispersion medium by using a single-frequency-driven phase modulator. The proposed method exploits the fact that the frequency spectrum of a given (input) waveform, following a suitable sinusoidal temporal phase modulation, exhibits the same shape as that of a dispersed version of the same temporal waveform after propagation through a prescribed amount of dispersion. In experiments, we track the dispersion-induced temporal evolution of different optical picosecond pulsed waveforms by tuning the frequency and/or amplitude of the phase modulation signal and observing the resulting shapes in the optical frequency domain. A good agreement is obtained between the measured spectra and predicted temporal shapes of the propagating waveform for different amounts of dispersion. Moreover, the method is successfully applied on a chirped optical pulse to find the optimal pulse compression conditions.

中文翻译：

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使用时间透镜的群速度色散仿真器

我们报告了一种新方法，通过使用单频驱动的相位调制器，连续跟踪任意复杂波形在通过群速度色散介质传播时的时间演变。所提出的方法利用了这样一个事实，即在适当的正弦时间相位调制之后，给定（输入）波形的频谱在通过规定的色散量传播后表现出与相同时间波形的离散版本相同的形状。在实验中，我们通过调整相位调制信号的频率和/或幅度并观察光频域中的结果形状来跟踪不同光学皮秒脉冲波形的色散引起的时间演变。对于不同的色散量，在测量的光谱和预测的传播波形的时间形状之间获得了很好的一致性。此外，该方法成功地应用于啁啾光脉冲以找到最佳脉冲压缩条件。