Spatio-temporal characterization of the electric-field of ultrashort optical pulses using two-dimensional shearing interferometry
01 June 2002
We report the complete spatio-temporal characterization of ultrashort light pulses using a self-referencing device based on shearing interferometry in the space and frequency domains. The apparatus combines Spectral Phase Interferometry for Direct Electric-field Reconstruction with a spectrally-resolved spatial shearing interferometer. The electric field as a function of one transverse spatial coordinate and time is obtained by means of a direct and fast algebraic phase reconstruction algorithm. The method has been tested on several common laboratory situations in which space-time coupling is quantified.