Simultaneous measurement of pulse-front tilt and pulse duration of a femtosecond laser beam

Abstract

Simultaneous single-shot measurements of pulse-front tilt and pulse duration of ultrashort laser pulses are performed using a single-shot autocorrelator. It uses non-collinear second-harmonic generation by overlapping an ultrashort laser pulse with its spatially inverted replica in a KDP crystal. The pulse-front tilt is determined from the rotation angle of the axis of the elliptical shaped autocorrelation trace. Performance of the system is demonstrated from measurements of the pulse duration and known pulse-front tilt introduced in 250 fs (FWHM) transform-limited laser pulses from a CW mode-locked Nd:glass laser.