Fully programmable two-dimensional pulse shaper for broadband line-by-line amplitude and phase control

We introduce a fully programmable two-dimensional (2D) pulse shaper, able to simultaneously control the amplitude and phase of very fine spectral components over a broad bandwidth. This is achieved by aligning two types of spectral dispersers in a cross dispersion setup: a virtually imaged phased array for accessing fine resolution and a transmission grating for achieving broad bandwidth. We take advantage of the resultant 2D dispersion profile as well as introduce programmability by adding a 2D liquid crystal on silicon spatial light modulator at the masking plane. Our shaper has a resolution of similar to 3 GHz operating over the entire 'C' band of > 5.8 THz. Experimental evidence is provided that highlights the full programmability, fine spectral control, and broad bandwidth operation (limited currently by the bandwidth of the input light). We also show line-by- line manipulation of record 836 comb lines over the C-band. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America