Interference-type time lens based on temporal hologram in a loop configuration.

An alternative scheme is proposed for implementing a time lens based on the temporal hologram concept. Instead of using edge-pass filtering, this scheme achieves the keeping of only the time-lens (quadratic phase modulation) term of interest through the interference of two modulated component beams. In this scheme, an additional linear frequency component does not have to be added to the electronic drive signal to avoid the overlapping of the target frequency component and its conjugate of the modulated signal. Thus, the proposed hologram-based time lens is not only able to relax the limitation of the bandwidth and sampling rate of the arbitrary waveform generator on the time-bandwidth product and resolution to some extent, but is also capable of processing shorter input pulse signals. These advantages make the proposed interference-type hologram time lens especially suitable for use in a loop configuration, where it can be reused when the signal pulse circulates in the loop. This promises significantly enhanced time-bandwidth product and resolution, and the temporal aperture size can be designed as large as desired theoretically.