Dispersion Engineering for Advanced Temporal Imaging Modalities

Temporal imaging provides a promising platform for ultrafast signal processing in both spectral and temporal domains. Most temporal imaging systems consist of time-lens and temporal dispersion; while optical fibers are desirable to achieve the dispersion component by virtue of their acceptable losses. On the other hand, parametric mixing-based time-lens is commonly used in temporal imaging thanks to the high modulation depth. In those situations, highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF) is used as the nonlinear medium. However, third-order dispersion (TOD) exists in commercial fibers will incur temporal aberration on the system. For instance, the inherent dispersion in HNLF decreases the conversion bandwidth of the parametric process, which restricts the performance of time-lens. In this article, we present our recent efforts in dispersion engineering for temporal imaging systems, both in the temporal dispersion and the nonlinear medium. All these efforts could inspire more innovative applications of temporal imaging modalities in the future.