Energy-Efficient Ultrashort-Pulse Characterization using Nanophotonic Parametric Amplification

TL;DR

This paper introduces an energy-efficient, on-chip ultrashort pulse characterization method using nanophotonic parametric amplification, enabling sub-80-fs pulse measurement with femtojoule-level energy, suitable for ultraweak pulses.

Contribution

The authors develop a novel FROG-based technique compatible with nanophotonics that significantly reduces energy requirements for ultrashort pulse characterization.

Findings

Demonstrated on-chip pulse characterization of sub-80-fs pulses

Achieved pulse measurement with ~60-fJ gate pulse energy

Reduced energy requirement by several orders of magnitude compared to bulk methods

Abstract

The growth of ultrafast nanophotonic circuits necessitates the development of energy-efficient on-chip pulse characterization techniques. Nanophotonic realizations of Frequency Resolved Optical Gating, a common pulse characterization technique in bulk optics, have been challenging due to their non-collinear nature and the lack of efficient nonlinear optical processes in the integrated platform. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a novel FROG-based technique compatible with the nanophotonic platform that leverages the high gain-bandwidth of a dispersion-engineered degenerate optical parametric amplifier for energy-efficient ultrashort pulse characterization. We demonstrate on-chip pulse characterization of sub-80-fs, ~1-fJ pulses using just ~60-fJ of gate pulse energy, which is several orders of magnitude lower than the gate pulse energy required for characterizing similar pulses in the bulk counterpart. In the future, we anticipate our work will enable the characterization of ultraweak-ultrashort pulses with energies at the single photon level.