OPTICAL PULSE BURST FORMATION APPARATUS AND METHOD

Optical pulse burst formation apparatus (100) comprising:a first interleaving stage (110) to receive an initial sequence (120) of optical pulses having an initial inter-pulse period, comprising:an optical splitter (112) to power split each optical pulse of the initial sequence of optical pulses, thereby generating a first and second sequences of sub-pulses;a first optical arm (114) to receive the first sequence, having a first optical path length; anda second optical arm (116) to receive the second sequence, having a second optical path length, different to the first optical path length by a path length difference, the path length difference configured to apply a time delay to the sub-pulses of the second sequence such that a relative time delay of that is substantially less than half the initial inter-pulse period is introduced between sub-pulses of the first sequence and sub-pulses of the second sequence; andan optical combiner (118) arranged to combine the first sequence of sub-pulses and the second sequence of delayed sub-pulses to form a sequence (122) of optical pulse bursts, each burst comprising a sub-pulse of the first sequence and a delayed sub-pulse of the second sequence.