Engineering of effective quadratic and cubic nonlinearities in two-period QPM gratings

Summary form only given. Quasi-phase-matching (QPM) by electric-field poling in ferro-electric materials, such as LiNbO/sub 3/, is promising due to the possibilities of engineering the photolithographic mask, and thus the QPM grating, without also generating a linear grating. A proper design of the longitudinal grating structure allows for distortion free temporal pulse compression, soliton shaping, broad-band phase matching, multiwavelength second-harmonic generation (SHG), and an enhanced cascaded phase shift. Transverse patterning can be used for beam-tailoring, broad-band SHG and soliton steering.