Phase Modulation of Ultrashort Light Pulses using Molecular Rotational Wave Packets

We demonstrate experimentally how the time-dependent phase modulation induced by molecular rotational wave packets can manipulate the phase and spectral content of ultrashort light pulses. Using impulsively excited rotational wave packets in ${\mathrm{CO}}_2$, we increase the bandwidth of a probe pulse by a factor of 9, while inducing a negative chirp. This chirp is removed by propagation through a fused silica window, without the use of a pulse compressor. This is a very general technique for optical phase modulation that can be applied over a broad spectral region from the IR to the UV.