Optical pulse compression

Dramatic and controllable reshaping of frequency-modulated dye laser pulses has been observed. The pulses, nearly resonant with the 2P 1/2 line (7948 Å) of Rb, first passed through a LiNbO 3 frequency modulator, and then through a cell containing dilute Rb vapor where the reshaping took place. Large pulse compressions were obtained with only 400 MHz of frequency modulation due to the extremely large frequency dispersion of the group velocity. © 1974 American Institute of Physics.