Dispersive Fourier Synthesis: Universal method and MATLAB tool for acousto-optic arbitrary femtosecond laser pulse shaping

Femtosecond pulse shaping is a variety of experimental methods for manipulating temporal profile of ultrashort laser pulses. One of common tools for pulse shaping are acousto-optic programmable Bragg gratings. We describe the Dispersive Fourier Synthesis (DFS) algorithm for generating arbitrary transmission functions of acousto-optic programmable dispersive filters and delay lines used therein. The algorithm performs computation of radio-frequency waveforms providing arbitrary complex-valued transmission functions of the said devices. An open-source MATLAB script was developed based on this algorithm taking into account the ease of use of a commercial RF driver. The experiments include full validation of the DFS algorithm: calibration of frequency-to-wavelength mapping, determination of optimal driving power, and closed-loop femtosecond pulse compression in the front-end of the PEARL laser facility.