Title :
How to measure the amplitude and phase of an ultrashort light pulse with an autocorrelator and a spectrometer
Author_Institution :
Res. Lab. of Electron., MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA
fDate :
11/1/1994 12:00:00 AM
Abstract :
The measurement of the spectrum of the output of an autocorrelator is proven to be sufficient for a complete determination of the complex electric field of an ultrashort light pulse, both in amplitude and phase, except for the time-reversal ambiguity which can be easily overcome in experiments. An iterative algorithm is proposed to retrieve the complex electric held from the experimental data. A numerical simulation proves the remarkable reliability and efficiency of the method. An experimental demonstration shows the simplicity of this technique
Keywords :
electric field measurement; high-speed optical techniques; iterative methods; numerical analysis; optical correlation; optical variables measurement; visible spectrometers; amplitude; autocorrelator; complex electric field; iterative algorithm; numerical simulation; output; phase; spectrally resolved autocorrelation; spectrometer; time-reversal ambiguity; ultrashort light pulse measurement; Autocorrelation; Electric variables measurement; Frequency domain analysis; Frequency measurement; Iterative algorithms; Optical pulse generation; Phase measurement; Pulse measurements; Pulse shaping methods; Shape measurement;
Journal_Title :
Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of
