Flexible Ultrafast Single-Shot Imaging based on Acousto-Optical Shaping and Hyperspectral Capture

Events on ultrashort timescales with microscopic spatial dimensions are omnipresent in science, and are now well-captured with fs and even sub-fs resolutions using pump-probe methods [1]. However, the latter are intrinsically limited to the study of reproducible events. The past decade has thus witnessed significant advances in single-shot ultrafast imaging, which achieve remarkable temporal resolutions and enable the study of transient or non-repetitive phenomena through the control and shaping of ultrashort pulses, coupled with innovative detection methods [2]. Advanced passive techniques such as those based on compressed ultrafast photography (CUP) can now capture hundreds of sequential images at record frame rates exceeding 200 Tfps (i.e. sub-ps resolution) [3].