Measurement of the ultrafast lighthouse effect using a complete spatiotemporal pulse-characterization technique

Abstract

Three of the four spatiotemporal pulse amplitude couplings—spatial chirp, angular dispersion, and pulse-front tilt—are well known for their important roles in optics and, especially, in ultrafast optics. The remaining one, only recently identified, corresponds to the pulse arrival time variation with angle and is known as the “ultrafast lighthouse effect.” This effect has important applications in attosecond science, but its characterization has not yet received much attention. In this work, we generate an ultrafast lighthouse and measure it using a recently developed single-frame complete spatiotemporal pulse-characterization technique called STRIPED FISH. We discuss in great detail the measured couplings in different domains and their roles in generating the ultrafast lighthouse effect. In addition, we display the propagation of the measured ultrafast lighthouse with an intuitive movie plot over space and time. We conclude that STRIPED FISH provides a simple and informative approach for measuring the ultrafast lighthouse effect and also other possible spatiotemporal distortions in the pulse, in both the horizontal and vertical dimensions.