Temporal optical besselon waves for high-repetition rate picosecond sources

We analyse the temporal properties of the optical pulse wave that is obtained by applying a discrete set of spectral pi/2 phase shifts to continuous-wave light that is phase-modulated by a temporal sinusoidal wave. We develop an analytical model to describe this new optical waveform that we name `besselon'. We also discuss the reduction of sidelobes in the pulse intensity profiles by means of an additional spectral pi phase shift, and show that the resulting pulses can be efficiently time-interleaved. The various predicted properties of the besselon are confirmed by experiments demonstrating the generation of low duty cycle, high-quality pulses at repetition rates up to 28 GHz.