Interferometric autocorrelation measurements of supercontinuum based on two-photon absorption

Abstract

We report on interferometric autocorrelation measurements of broadband supercontinuum light in the anomalous dispersion regime using two-photon absorption in a GaP photodetector. The method is simple, low-cost, and provides a direct measure of the second-order coherence properties, including quantitative information on the coherence time and average duration of the supercontinuum pulses as well as on the presence of temporally coherent sub-structures. We report measurements in regimes where the supercontinuum is coherent and incoherent. In the former case, the interferometric measurements are similar to what is observed for mode-locked laser pulses while in the latter case the interferometric measurements and coherence properties are shown to have characteristics similar to that of a stationary chaotic light source.