Compact high-resolution spectral phase shaper

The design and operation of a high-resolution spectral phase shaper with a footprint of only 7x10 cm2 is presented. The liquid-crystal modulator has 4096 elements. More than 600 independent degrees of freedom can be positioned with a relative accuracy of 1 pixel. The spectral shaping of pulses from a broadband Ti:sapphire laser is verified by a hybrid cross-frequency-resolved optical gating/Grenouille measurement and intensity autocorrelation. We demonstrate the ability to split one pulse into two or more pulses with a programmable delay of more than 8.5 ps. To our knowledge this represents the most compact high resolution device in liquid-crystal modulator-based shaping to this date