Femtosecond pulse shaping using a two-dimensional liquid-crystal spatial light modulator

We introduce a programmable, high-rate scanning femtosecond pulse shaper based on a two-dimensional liquid crystal on a silicon spatial light modulator (SLM). While horizontal resolution of 1920 addressable pixels provides superior fidelity for generating complex waveforms, scanning across the vertical dimension (1080 pixels) has been used to facilitate at least 3 orders of magnitude speed increase as compared with typical liquid-crystal SLM-based pulse shapers. An update rate in excess of 100 kHz is demonstrated.