Modulated laser as an optical amplitude and phase trigger

Alfredo E. Domínguez, Walter E. Ortega Larcher, Carlos N. Kozameh

The residual amplitude modulation (RAM) is a spurious effect of the phase modulation in the laser beam power. In this work we show that the optical modulators that are used to generate the sidebands on the laser beam generate a RAM that should be regarded as a fundamental level of noise in the optical setup.

R. N. Shakhmuratov, A. R. Kessel

J. F. Chen, Heejeong Jeong, L. Feng +3 more

We report the generation of stacked optical precursors from a laser beam whose amplitude or phase is modulated by sequenced on-off step waveforms. Making use of the constructive interference between the precursors produced from different steps, as well as the main field, we generate optical transient pulses having peak powers of eight times the input power with electromagnetically induced transparency in laser-cooled atoms.

D. Grischkowsky

Anatoli P. Sukhorukov, A. K. Shchednova

Shuzhe Yang, Guido Masella, Vase Moeini +4 more

A key requirement for quantum technologies based on atoms, ions, and molecules is the ability to realize precise phase- and amplitude-controlled quantum operations via coherent laser pulses. However, for generating pulses on the submicrosecond timescale, the characteristics of the optical and electronic components can introduce unwanted distortions that have a detrimental effect on the fidelity of quantum operations. In this paper, we present a compact arbitrary optical waveform modulator that integrates a double-pass acousto-optic modulator for user-specified laser amplitude and phase modulations. Additionally, the module integrates an optical heterodyne detector to extract the precise laser pulse shape in real time. The measured pulse shape is then fed into a digital feedback loop used to estimate the complex-valued transfer function and predistorted input pulses. We demonstrate the performance by generating shaped laser pulses suitable for realizing quantum logic gates with durations down to 180 ns, requiring only a small number of feedback iterations.