Phase effects in non-linear optical sampling

Summary form only given. Temporal pulse characterization is gaining increased attention as bit rates become higher and data pulses become shorter. For short pulses (in the 10 ps range), direct photodetection with high speed detectors suffers from limited bandwidth. To circumvent this problem, non-linear optical sampling can be implemented via interferometric cross-correlations of the data pulses with much shorter sampling pulses by sum-frequency generation or two-photon photocurrent. We demonstrate the significance of phase effects in non-linear sampling, particularly for real-time diagnostics.