Femtosecond optical pulse generation from a CW laser using an electrooptic phase modulator featuring lens modulation

We report a novel electrooptic phase modulator featuring lens modulation and its application to the electrooptic chirping compression method for ultrashort optical pulse generation. In the pulse generation experiment, pedestal free optical pulses of 550 fs in width with a 16.25-GHz repetition rate were obtained by the group delay dispersion of a grating pair from a CW Ar laser. Furthermore, the electrooptic chirping compression method with the electrooptic phase modulator featuring lens modulation is applicable to the negative group delay dispersion as well as positive group delay dispersion.