Measurement of ultrashort pulse amplitude and phase by rapidly acquiring and retrieving a sonogram

Summary form only given. Over the past few years the techniques employed to characterise ultrashort pulses have matured greatly. Methodologies such as second harmonic generation frequency-resolved optical gating (SHG-FROG) have been successfully used to determine the amplitude and phase of pulses from mode-locked laser oscillators. SHG-FROG however has two fundamental disadvantages: it is insensitive to the sign of the pulse phase and has a limited measurement bandwidth because it uses a phase-matched SHG crystal. We have developed an alternative approach that avoids these limitations and is based on a measurement of the sonogram of the pulse.