Effect of nonlinear crystal thickness on the parameters of the autocorrelator of femtosecond light pulses

Abstract

It is shown that the finite thickness of the second-harmonic crystal distorts the results of measurements in nonlinear autocorrelators intended for measuring the durations and fields of femtosecond light pulses mainly due to dispersive broadening (or compression) of the pulses being measured, as well as due to the group velocity mismatch between the fundamental and sum-frequency pulses. The refractive index dispersion of the crystal, scaled by half its thickness, distorts the pulse duration to a certain extent depending on its initial chirp and thus determines the width of the energy distribution recorded in the autocorrelator. As the crystal thickness increases, the group velocity mismatch leads to a transformation of the recorded distribution from the correlation function of intensity to the squared modulus of the field correlation function. In the case of Gaussian pulses, such a transformation does not affect significantly the recorded distribution. Errors of pulse duration measurements are estimated.