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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics

Temporal dependence of coherent transient regenerated true-time delays on intensity of applied pulses

K.D. Merkel, William Randall Babbitt

Published Jan 1, 1998• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Summary form only given. Accurate true-time delays are essential to correctly steer modern phased-array antennas. Optical coherent transient technology has the ability to store a variable true-time delay as a spatial-spectral holographic population grating in an inhomogeneously broadened absorber (IBA). Typically, two optical pulses program the delay. A third optical pulse or waveform applied to the IBA generates a delayed replica of itself. The delay is typically defined by /spl tau//sub 21/=t/sub 2/-t/sub 1/, the arrival time difference of the first two pulses. However, we find that this prediction for the delay of the emitted signal only holds for input optical pulse areas much less than pi. Experimental investigation and simulations were performed to observe the variation in arrival time of the output signal.

DOI
10.1109/cleo.1998.676011

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Summary form only given. Accurate true-time delays are essential to correctly steer modern phased-array antennas. Optical coherent transient technology has the ability to store a variable true-time delay as a spatial-spectral holographic population grating in an inhomogeneously broadened absorber (IBA). Typically, two optical pulses program the delay. A third optical pulse or waveform applied to the IBA generates a delayed replica of itself. The delay is typically defined by /spl tau//sub 21/=t/sub 2/-t/sub 1/, the arrival time difference of the first two pulses. However, we find that this prediction for the delay of the emitted signal only holds for input optical pulse areas much less than pi. Experimental investigation and simulations were performed to observe the variation in arrival time of the output signal.
Summary form only given. A practical device creating a variable RF true-time delay (TTD) for signals on an optical carrier would be useful in array antennas. An optical coherent transient (OCT)-TTD device could provide high-resolution delays (/spl sim/1 ps) over a wide range (/spl sim/1 /spl mu/s), for high bandwidth signals (/spl sim/10 GHz) with currently available materials. In previously demonstrated OCT-TTD devices, two optical pulses separated in time and space program a delay in an absorbing medium as a spatial-spectral grating on an inhomogeneously broadened transition (IBT). In the paper, we experimentally demonstrate widely tunable OCT-TTD of a continuous optical data stream without changing the timing between the programming pulses.
Summary form only given. When phased array antenna systems operate with broadband (multiple gigahertz) signals, true time-delay devices are needed to solve the problem of beam squint. Optical coherent transient technology, also known as spatial-spectral holography, offers a unique way of using the space and frequency dimensions of inhomogeneously broadened absorbers to handle thousands of high-resolution delays in a compact volume. We demonstrated broadband true-time delay in a Tm/sup 3+/:YAG crystal, which offers delays up to a microsecond on signals having several tens of GHz bandwidth with sub-picosecond delay resolution.
A theoretical analysis of the optical coherent transients that arise when a sample of two-level atoms is irradiated by a sequence of three broad-bandwidth pulses is presented. The first two pulses have a relative delay time of order of the correlation time of the pulse fluctuations and are sent into an atomic vapor from different directions. These pulses, whose temporal width is much greater than the delay time, can be correlated with one another and can be strong enough to saturate the two-level atomic transition. The third pulse is weak, noncorrelated with the first two, and is delayed in time so that it does not overlap them. We present a detailed examination of the transient signal that is produced when the third pulse is scattered by the spatial gratings in the population difference of atoms created by the first two pulses. Taking into account the effects of inhomogeneous and homogeneous broadening, we calculate the intensity of the transient signal, emitted in different directions, as a function of delay time. The signal is found to depend dramatically on the intensities of the excitation pulses. It is shown that, for strong excitation pulses, there is a direct dependence of the signal on the cross-correlation time of pulses ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\tau}}}_{\mathit{c}}^{12}$ that does not exist when the pulses are weak. In particular, the strongest signals exhibit a peak of width of order ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\tau}}}_{\mathit{c}}^{12}$. This peak can have a very narrow dip near its maximum whose width is much smaller than ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\tau}}}_{\mathit{c}}^{12}$, if the pulses are fully correlated. We develop a representation of the time evolution of the Bloch vector of a two-level atom, driven by time-delayed pulses, that enables us to explain our results. In this representation, the two time-delayed pulses are replaced by two fully overlapping pulses having some effective amplitudes and atomic field detunings.
A technique is proposed and experimentally demonstrated that achieves simultaneous optical pattern waveform storage and programmable time delay for continuous real-time signal processing by use of optical coherent transient technology. We achieve variable-time-delay and broadband signal processing by frequency shifting of two chirped programming pulses, the chirp rate of one being twice that of the other, without using brief reference pulses and without changing the timing of the programming sequence. We demonstrate the technique experimentally in Tm(3+): YAG at 5 K for 40-MHz chirps by performing temporal signal convolution with true-time delays that vary over a 250-ns range.
A novel technique for programming broadband true-time delays that uses two frequency-offset temporally overlapped linear frequency-chirped pulses to produce periodic spectral gratings in an inhomogeneously broadened absorber is presented. Advantages of this technique include its ability to use chirped pulses that are longer than the coherence time of the crystal, less stringent laser frequency-stability requirements for grating accumulation, lower power requirements, a simplified system design, and the ability to tune broadband (multigigahertz) delays over a wide dynamic range (picoseconds to microseconds).
We have demonstrated a technique for programming variable time delays of a pattern waveform in a spectral grating. By frequency shifting the chirped programming pulses, correlation and delays over 450 ns were achieved without changing the programming sequence timing. The demonstrated bandwidth of 40 MHz only utilized /spl sim/0.2 % of the inhomogeneously broadened absorber's bandwidth. Thus, this technique has the potential to allow versatile, all-optical reception and processing of > 10 GHz signals in broadband array antenna beamforming.