Abstract
In this contribution some basic properties of femtosecond laser pulse are summarized. In sections 2.1–2.5 the generation of femtosecond laser pulses via mode locking is described in simple physical terms. In section 2.6 we deal with measurement of ultrashort laser pulses. The characterization of ultrashort pulses with respect to amplitude and phase is therefore based on optical correlation techniques that make of the short pulse itself. In section 3 we start with the linear properties of ultrashort light pulses. However, due to the large bandwidth, the linear dispersion is responsible for dramatic effects. To describe and manage such dispersion effects a mathematical description of an ultrashort laser pulse is given first before we continue with methods how to change the temporal shape via the frequency domain. The chapter ends with a paragraph of the wavelet representation of an ultrashort laser pulse.
Highlights
In 1982, the first Ti:sapphire laser was built by Mouton [14]
The Spectral Phase Interferometry for Direct Electric-field Reconstruction technique (SPIDER) is based on spectral interferometry and needs no components which has to be shifted over the measurement process
An ultrashort Fourier limited pulse has a broad spectrum and no chirp; whenit propagates a distance through a transparent medium, the medium introduces dispersion to the pulse inducing an increase in the pulse duration
Summary
Propagation of ultrashort optical pulses in a linear optical medium consisting of free space [1–5], dispersive media [6, 7], diffractive optical elements [8–10], focusing elements [11] and apertures [12, 13] has been extensively studied analytically, though only a few isolated attempts have been made on numerical simulation. Analytical methods have the limitations of not being able to handle arbitrary pulse profiles
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