Acousto-optically driven single-shot ultrafast optical imaging

TL;DR

This paper introduces a versatile, single-shot ultrafast imaging technique combining optical mapping photography with acousto-optic filtering, allowing independent control of imaging parameters and lensless operation for real-world applications.

Contribution

It presents a novel, flexible ultrafast imaging method with independently adjustable parameters and lensless holographic capability, enhancing practicality over existing techniques.

Findings

Validated imaging of ultrashort events on picosecond and nanosecond scales

Achieved independent control of frame rate, exposure, and intensity

Demonstrated lensless operation using digital in-line holography

Abstract

Driven by many applications in a wide span of scientific fields, a myriad of advanced ultrafastimaging techniques have emerged in the last decade, featuring record-high imaging speeds abovea trillion-frame-per-second with long sequence depths. Although bringing remarkable insights invarious ultrafast phenomena, their application out of a laboratory environment is however limitedin most cases, either by the cost, complexity of operation or by an heavy data processing. We thenreport a flexible single-shot imaging technique combining sequentially-timed all-optical mappingphotography (STAMP) with acousto-optics programmable dispersive filtering. The full controlover the acquisition parameters is enabled via the spectro-temporal tailoring of the imaging pulsesin an electrically-driven spectral phase and amplitude shaper in which the pulse shaping in boththe temporal and spectral domains is controlled through the interaction of the light field with anacoustic wave. Here, contrary to most single-shot techniques, the frame rate, exposure time and frameintensities can be independently adjusted in a wide range of pulse durations and chirp values, makingthe system remarkably versatile and user-friendly. The imaging speed of the system as well as itsflexibility are validated by visualizing ultrashort events on both the picosecond and nanosecond timescales. With the perspective of real-world applications and to achieve the highest technical simplicity,we eventually demonstrate its lensless operation based on digital in-line holography. The virtues andlimitations as well as the potential improvements of this on-demand ultrafast imaging method arecritically discussed.