Dealing with the increase in digital optical data transmission rates requires innovative approaches for stretching or compressing optical waveforms beyond the bandwidth limitations inherent in conventional electro‐optical systems. To this aim, photonic platforms exploiting ultrafast nonlinear phenomena have been successfully applied to the temporal stretching of optical waveforms. However, the inverse process, that is, the temporal compression of arbitrary lightwaves, has remained largely unexploited so far. Here we present an experimental demonstration of the extreme temporal compression of optical waveforms, including non‐trivial on‐demand time reversal. The method is based on counterpropagating degenerate four‐photon interaction in birefringent optical fibres. We demonstrate the performance of this system by generating the ultrafast replica of data packets with record temporal compression factors ranging from 4,350 to 13,000. This approach is scalable and offers great promise for ultrafast arbitrary optical waveform generation and related applications.

处理数字光学数据传输速率的提高需要创新的方法来拉伸或压缩光学波形，使其超出传统电光系统固有的带宽限制。为此，利用超快非线性现象的光子平台已成功应用于光波形的时间拉伸。然而，到目前为止，逆过程，即任意光波的时间压缩，在很大程度上仍未被开发。在这里，我们展示了光学波形的极端时间压缩的实验演示，包括非平凡的按需时间反转。该方法基于在双折射光纤中反向传播简并四光子相互作用。我们通过生成具有创纪录的时间压缩因子从 4,350 到 13,000 的数据包的超快副本来展示该系统的性能。这种方法具有可扩展性，并为超快任意光波形生成和相关应用提供了广阔前景。