Principles of parametric temporal imaging. II. System performance

For pt. I, see ibid., vol. 36, p. 430, April 2000. The waveform manipulation technique known as temporal imaging can expand or compress signals in time while maintaining the shape of their envelope profiles. The temporal imaging system is analogous to that of its spatial counterpart, with dispersive propagation performing the role of diffraction and quadratic phase modulation in time acting as a "time lens." Recent work has concentrated on time lenses produced by the parametric mixing of the dispersed input signal with a linearly chirped optical pump pulse because of the broad bandwidth, and thus fine temporal resolution, that can be obtained. In a previous paper, we presented the numerous parametric imaging configurations that are possible and drew temporal ray diagrams to illustrate their operation. In this paper, we study the performance of these systems. Resolution, field of view, number of resolvable features, and distortions particular to this approach are discussed.