  We report the study and demonstration of a new laser pulse shaping system
capable of generating linearly polarized picosecond laser pulses with variable
temporal profiles including symmetric intensity distributions such as
parabolic, flattop, elliptical, triangular, as well as non-symmetric
distributions, which are highly desired by various applications. It is found
that both high transmittance and high stability of the shaped pulse can be
achieved simultaneously when crystals are set at a specific phase delay through
fine control of the crystal temperature. Although multi-crystal pulse stacking
with different configurations were reported before particularly for flattop
pulse generation, this new configuration leads to new opportunities for many
potential applications over a wide range of laser wavelengths, pulse repetition
rate, time structures and power levels. A practical double-pass temporal
shaping configuration that significantly reduces the number of crystals is also
proposed in this paper as a result of this work.
