Characterization of arbitrary femtosecond pulses using frequency-resolved optical gating
- Southwest Sciences, Inc., Santa Fe, NM (United States)
- Sandia National Labs., Livermore, CA (United States)
The authors introduce a new technique, which they call frequency-resolved optical gating (FROG), for characterizing and displaying arbitrary femtosecond pulses. The method is simple, general, broad-band, and does not require a reference pulse. Using virtually any instantaneous nonlinear-optical effect, FROG involves measuring the spectrum of the signal pulse as a function of the delay between two input pulses. The resulting trace of intensity versus frequency and delay is related to the pulse's spectrogram, a visually intuitive transform containing both time and frequency information. They prove, using phase retrieval concepts, that the FROG trace yields the full intensity l(t) and phase [var phi](t) of an arbitrary ultrashort pulse with no physically significant ambiguities. They argue, in analogy with acoustics problems, that the FROG trace is in many ways as useful a representation of the pulse as the field itself. FROG appears to have temporal resolution limited only by the response of the nonlinear medium. They demonstrate the method using self-diffraction via the electronic Kerr effect in BK-7 glass and few [mu]J, 620 nm, linearly chirped, [approximately]200 fs pulses.
- OSTI ID:
- 6436490
- Journal Information:
- IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (United States), Vol. 29:2; ISSN 0018-9197
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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