Past exam of the laser science and quantum information processing course of the University of Oxford / 2018 / 1 / d / Solution

A time delay $d$ multiplies the spectral field by $e^{i\omega d}$. The bright-port transfer function is thereforeThe spectral transmission maxima have angular frequency spacing $\Delta \omega =2\pi /|d|$. For a strongly chirped pulse the local frequency-time mapping is $\omega (t)={\omega }_0+2bt$. Thus the filter's adjacent transmitted frequency bands emerge at times separated byas obtained directly from the temporal fields. The spectral transfer function itself is exact; mapping its features directly onto time requires a sufficiently strong chirp and overlapping envelopes.

As $|d|$ approaches the pulse duration, the two envelopes overlap only partly and the small-delay formula fails. For $|d|\gg \tau$, the selected port contains two separate replicas of field amplitude $E_0/2$, each with one quarter of the input pulse energy. Their combined energy is half the input; the other output port carries the remainder. There is no temporal overlap or corresponding time-resolved interference. A sufficiently resolving spectrometer can still reveal fine spectral fringes, whose spacing decreases as $1/|d|$.