Unified approach to short optical pulse recording and spatial imaging with subwavelength resolution

We propose and numerically demonstrate a simple method for measuring waveforms of optical pulses that have spectral bandwidths much larger than the passband of the measuring system, thus enabling a kind of temporal superresolution. The technique is based on pulse intensity modulation that contains high-order harmonics. Parts of the pulse intensity spectrum that are shifted as a result of the modulation, are moved over (“umklapped”) to the center of the passband, transmitted and then recorded by an oscilloscope. The pulse intensity spectrum is restored by parts from the Fourier transform of a few oscillograms, measured after performing the temporal shifts between the pulse train and the modulation. A similar approach is applied for achieving subwavelength spatial resolution in far –field microscopy. The spatial modulation is performed by a diffraction grating. The method allows one to restore a subwavelength object in a single measurement.