Patent ID: 7495816

Claim:
A method comprising: directing an input EM waveform comprising a plurality of spatially overlapped frequency components to be incident on a dispersive optical element that disperses the dispersing frequency components along a first direction with each frequency component spatially extended along a second direction different from the first direction; setting an amplitude and a phase for an output portion of each of the spatially extended frequency components; and combining the output portions from the different frequency components to produce a temporally shaped output EM waveform, wherein setting the amplitude for the output portion of each frequency component comprises independently adjusting a subset of adjustable elements of a reconfigurable mask to selectively diffract the spatially extended frequency component into different diffraction orders; and wherein setting the phase comprises adjusting the mask such that a phase shift applied by the mask to at least some of the frequency components differs from a phase shift applied to at least some other frequency components among the spatially overlapped frequency components.