High-fidelity line-by-line optical waveform generation and complete characterization using FROG.

A stable optical frequency comb with 20-GHz spacing is shaped by a compact integrated silica arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) pair to produce optical waveforms with unprecedented fidelity. Complete characterization of both the intensity and phase of the crafted optical fields is accomplished with cross-correlation frequency resolved optical gating (XFROG) which has been optimized for periodic waveforms with resolvable modes. A new method is proposed to quantify, in a single number, the quality of the match in both the amplitude and phase between the measured optical waveform and the target waveform.