Gold-SPIDER: spectral phase interferometry for direct electric field reconstruction utilizing sum-frequency generation from a gold surface

Abstract

We report on a version of spectral phase interferometry for direct electric field reconstruction (SPIDER) that uses no nonlinear crystals, instead relying on the harmonic signal from a gold mirror. Surface harmonic generation holds the promise of being able to upconvert extremely broad bandwidths over a large tuning range, thus providing access to both extremely short pulses and wavelengths outside of traditional methods. In this proof of principle demonstration, SPIDER traces for chirped and transform-limited 55 fs pulses are presented.

Doppler effect as a tool for ultrashort electric field reconstruction

“…While variants of d-scan [16] or FROG [17,18] have been applied for characterizing UV pulses, there is still a need for methods enabling self-referenced and single-shot measurement of weak pulses as intrinsically provided by SPIDER devices. In specific cases, the shear can be produced in non-standard ways from gold surfaces [19] or in gas [20]. A scheme called DC-SPIDER [15,21], relying on the difference frequency generation (DFG) between the pulse to characterize and a chirped pulse of smaller frequency, has also been proposed for the characterization of UV pulses.…”

Measuring the time–frequency properties of photon pairs: A short review

“…This poses a limitation to SPIDER,and to all techniques reconstructing the envelope alike, as the phase will be retrieved up to a term linear in ω. [79] Since the development of SPIDER many different variants have been realized to improve and adapt the technique to respond to the different needs dictated by the pulses' complexity [80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88]; these included a referenced implementation, X-SPIDER [89][90][91], where a known reference is used to make up for low intensity pulse, and SEA-CAR-SPIDER [92], which adopts a multiple shear approach to account for highly modulated spectra and improving the robustness to noise.…”

The Development of the Temporal Measurements for Ultrashort Laser Pulses

“…Moreover, it is very sensitive to the environment, easily causing jitters or shift between two pulse replicas, which is required to be controlled at a sub-fs level (or even 10 as for few-cycle pulses) [63]. A glass plate (or etalon) [66,69] causing multiple reflections is a substitute for MI. However, the output is a fade-out pulse train where the fade-in additional dispersions introducing to the sub-pulses.…”