Panoramic-reconstruction temporal imaging for seamless measurements of slowly-evolved femtosecond pulse dynamics

TL;DR

The paper introduces a panoramic-reconstruction temporal imaging system that extends the temporal recording length for ultrafast optical waveform measurements, enabling detailed analysis of slowly evolving femtosecond pulse dynamics.

Contribution

A novel panoramic-reconstruction temporal imaging (PARTI) system is developed to increase temporal recording length without losing resolution, demonstrated on dissipative Kerr soliton dynamics.

Findings

Reconstructed two 1.5-ns evolution portraits with 740-fs resolution.

Visualized the transition from multiplet to stable singlet soliton states.

Enabled detailed study of slow-evolving femtosecond pulse phenomena.

Abstract

Single-shot real-time characterization of optical waveforms with sub-picosecond resolution is essential for investigating various ultrafast optical dynamics. However, the finite temporal recording length of current techniques hinders comprehensive understanding of many intriguing ultrafast optical phenomena that evolve over a time scale much longer than their fine temporal details. Inspired by the space-time duality and by stitching of multiple microscopic images to achieve a larger field of view in the spatial domain, here a panoramic-reconstruction temporal imaging (PARTI) system is devised to scale up the temporal recording length without sacrificing the resolution. As a proof-of-concept demonstration, the PARTI system is applied to study the dynamic waveforms of slowly-evolved dissipative Kerr solitons in an ultrahigh-Q microresonator. Two 1.5-ns-long comprehensive evolution portraits are reconstructed with 740-fs resolution and dissipative Kerr soliton transition dynamics, in which a multiplet soliton state evolves into stable singlet soliton state, are depicted.