Interferometric polarization pulse shaper stabilized by an external laser diode for arbitrary vector field shaping

We achieved reliable and stable generation of pulses with all possible polarization states by a Mach-Zehnder pulse shaper. This was realized by incorporating a stabilization mechanism using an external laser diode in the interferometric pulse shaper. This stabilization mechanism has overcome an inherent instability in the Mach-Zehnder interferometer, which caused serious distortion of shaped pulses. For a demonstration of polarization shaping, we generated and measured chiral pulses with a rotating major axis of polarizing orientations at arbitrary frequencies. We expect these chiral pulses enables us to study on new chirality-related light-matter interactions. (C) 2009 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3270254]