Femtosecond pulse shaping with plasmonic crystals

The temporal shaping of femtosecond laser pulses reflected from a one-dimensional plasmonic crystal using a commercially available polymer grating coated with a silver film is experimentally demonstrated by time-resolved measurements of the intensity correlation function. Shaping is achieved by the excitation of surface plasmon-polaritons with a lifetime comparable to the 130 fs laser pulse duration. The variety of data obtained demonstrate the flexible shaping of fs-pulses by delaying, advancing, splitting, broadening, compressing, and changing the topological properties of the pulse with the plasmonic crystals under study.