Electric picosecond pulse length measurement through autocorrelation

An electric autocorrelator for the measurement of electric pulse lengths is presented. The setup is described and a simple model has been derived and used to evaluate the measurement results. Measurements have been done with electric pulses with a Gaussian profile with 40 ps FWHM. When assuming Gaussian pulses, autocorrelation calculations show that the FWHM of the autocorrelate is a factor ??2 larger then the FWHM of the pulse under test. In the measurements this factor is 1.1. The difference in the measured and simulated results are possibly caused by simplifications in the model and by the fact that the electric input pulses are not perfectly Gaussian.