Ultrafast Pulse Shaping with Plasmonic Systems

Coherent excitation in optical spectroscopy and photo-induced processes like second harmonic generation and Raman spectroscopy depend on temporal properties of ultrafast pulses. In this work, we explore what spectral phase is necessary in a material to influence these processes and discuss plasmonic systems that can be fabricated to have very large spectral dispersion properties that can positively affect both the temporal envelope of an ultrafast pulse and the phase of each spectral component.