Amplitude and phase control of ultrashort pulses by use of an acousto-optic programmable dispersive filter: pulse compression and shaping.

We demonstrate experimentally that an arbitrary phase and amplitude profile can be applied to an ultrashort pulse by use of an acousto-optic programmable dispersive filter (AOPDF). Our filter has a large group-delay range that extends over 3 ps and a 30% diffraction efficiency over 150 THz. Experiments were conducted on a kilohertz chirped-pulse amplification laser chain capable of generating 30-fs pulses without additional pulse shaping. Compensating for gain narrowing and residual phase errors with an AOPDF in place of the stretcher results in 17-fs transform-limited pulses. Arbitrary shaping of these 17-fs pulses is also demonstrated in both the temporal and the spectral domains.