Quote Originally Posted by Iguanasan View Post
Cool! I like gadgets.... I have to say though that they have quite the descriptive text.

"Its "flashbulb" is a fast laser pulse dispersed in space and then stretched in time and detected electronically"

What the heck does it mean by "stretched in time" ?!?
I had this in a file for something I was reading about, if I can find the source I will post it, I prefer to point to the source when I can but at the moment it eludes me. I am not taking credit in anyway for writing this, it was something I came across while researching wave theory but was not related to what I was looking for but kept it and planned and reading more about it at a later date. I think this is what your looking for.


Concept for analog-to-digital (A/D) conversion based on photonic time stretch. The analog electrical signal is intensity modulated on a chirp optical waveform generated by dispersing an ultrashort pulse. The modulated chirped waveform is dispersed in an optical fiber, leading to the stretching of its envelope. We have derived analytical expressions for the stretch factor and the resolution of the system. An analog-to-digital converter (ADC) consisting of the photonic time-stretch preprocessor and a 1-Gsample/s electronic ADC is demonstrated. This technique is promising for A/D conversion of ultrafast signals and, hence, for realization of the digital receiver.