Single-shot Multi-timescale Ultrafast Photography based on All-optical Ultrashort Pulse Manipulation

Abstract

High-speed photography has widely contributed to the development of natural science as an indispensable technology for understanding high-speed phenomena. Optical imaging using ultrashort pulse lasers has played an important role in the measurement of ultrafast phenomena that cannot be captured by electrical high-speed cameras. Nowadays, it is possible to satisfy all temporal resolution requirements from femtoseconds to seconds. However, it is still difficult to measure phenomena lasting over a wide range of timescales from femtoseconds to seconds in a single shot, due to the temporal resolution of electrical high-speed cameras and the limited number of frames of optical imaging methods. This article describes an imaging method to overcome these limitations: a single-shot multi-timescale ultrafast photography based on all-optical ultrashort pulse manipulation. As a demonstration, we introduce single-shot measurements of ultrashort laser processing of glass on pico-, nano-, and milli-second timescales (~10–100 ps, ~1–10 ns, and ~1–100 ms).