Full characterization of 8 fs deep UV pulses via a dispersion scan.

Abstract

We report on, to the best of our knowledge, the first characterization of deep ultraviolet (UV) pulses by the dispersion scan (d-scan) technique. Negatively chirped 8fs deep UV pulses are generated via the phase transfer of shaped few-cycle near-infrared pulses in a sum frequency generation process with narrowband second harmonic. The pulses are characterized by a d-scan technique incorporating a cross-polarized wave (XPW) generation nonlinearity. Being a single-beam degenerate four-wave mixing process, XPW does not acquire frequency conversion and, thus, is ideally suited for characterizing pulses in the UV, where the material dispersion severely limits phase matching. The characterization method is benchmarked by measuring the dispersion effect of a known fused silica plate on the pulses.