Abstract
A method of asynchronous optical sampling based on free-running lasers with no requirement on the repetition rates is presented. The method is based on the a posteriori determination of the delay between each pair of pulses. A resolution better than 400 fs over 13 ns total delay scan is demonstrated. In addition to the advantages of conventional asynchronous sampling techniques, this method allows a straightforward implementation on already-existing laser systems using a fiber-based setup and an appropriate acquisition procedure.
Highlights
Many applications of femtosecond lasers, such as time-resolved pump-probe spectroscopy, rely on pairs of ultrashort pulses with a well known and variable time delay used to explore the temporal dynamics of the sample under study
A method of asynchronous optical sampling based on freerunning lasers with no requirement on the repetition rates is presented
The method is based on the a posteriori determination of the delay between each pair of pulses
Summary
Many applications of femtosecond lasers, such as time-resolved pump-probe spectroscopy, rely on pairs of ultrashort pulses with a well known and variable time delay used to explore the temporal dynamics of the sample under study. The most widely used approach is asynchronous optical sampling (ASOPS), a stroboscopic method based on the Received 12 Jun 2012; revised 17 Jul 2012; accepted 17 Jul 2012; published 20 Jul 2012 30 July 2012 / Vol 20, No 16 / OPTICS EXPRESS 17929 use of two femtosecond oscillators that allows extremely fast scanning on a broad time range extending up to the laser period [1,2,3,4,5,6,7] This method has found numerous applications, e.g. in pump-probe or four-wave mixing spectroscopy [5,8,9,10,11,12], and Fourier-transform spectroscopy in the mid-infrared [7, 13] and far-infrared (or THz) [14,15,16,17]. We note that our approach is closely related to an optical sampling method developed in the field of optical telecommunications for the specific purpose of characterizing eye diagrams or bit error rates, in which case a software synchronization method can rely on the signal itself for a posteriori recovery of the time axis [28,29,30]
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