High-resolution single-shot ultrafast imaging at ten trillion frames per second

Abstract: Ultrafast imaging is a powerful tool for studying space-time dynamics in photonic material, plasma physics, living cells, and neural activity. Pushing the imaging speed to the quantum limit could reveal extraordinary scenes about the questionable quantization of life and intelligence, or the wave-particle duality of light. However, previous designs of ultrafast photography are intrinsically limited by framing speed. Here, we introduce a new technique based on a multiple non-collinear optical parametric amplifier principle (MOPA), which readily push the frame rate into the area of ten trillion frames per second with higher spatial resolution than 30 line pairs per millimeter. The MOPA imaging is applied to record the femtosecond early evolution of laser-induced plasma grating in air for the first time. Our approach avoids the intrinsic limitations of previous methods, thus can be potentially optimized for higher speed and resolution, opening the way of approaching quantum limits to test the fundamentals.