Ultrafast temporal pulse shaping via phase-sensitive three-wave mixing.

It is well-known that the process of optical parametric amplification (OPA) can be sensitive to the phases of the incident waves. In OPA realized by three-wave mixing, injection of all three waves into the same mode with appropriate phase relationship results in amplification of the signal phase, with an associated deamplification of the signal energy. Prospects for the use of this technique in the temporal domain for shaping ultrashort laser pulses are analyzed using a numerical model. Several representative pulse shaping capabilities of this technique are identified, which can significantly augment the performance of common passive pulse shaping methods operating in the Fourier domain. It is found that the use of phase-sensitive OPA shows a potential for significant compression of approximately 100 fs pulses, steepening of the rise time of ultrashort pulses, and production of pulse doublets and pulse trains. It is also shown that the group velocity mismatch can assist the shaping process. Such pulse shaping capabilities are found to be within reach of this technique in common nonlinear optical crystals pumped by pulses available from compact femtosecond chirped-pulse amplification laser systems.