Serial-to-parallel conversion of femtosecond optical pulses using organic optical shutter

Summary form only given. Time-to-space conversion of femtosecond pulses were reported recently. We propose a new concept of serial-to-parallel pulse conversion based on time-to-space conversion, using an organic film as a two-dimensional array of ultrafast optical shutters. As we have already reported, spincoated films of squarylium (SQ) J-aggregates exhibit the bleached absorption at 775 nm and the absorption change relaxes within 200-300 fs. Thus, a SQ film with a large area is used as an array of femtosecond optical shutters. Using this organic optical shutter, we constructed an optical system, which converts serial pulses of 1-THz repetition rate to parallel output pulses by a single femtosecond gate pulse.