Spatio-Temporal Characterization of High-Power Few-Cycle Pulses by SEA-F-SPIDER and Time-Domain Ptychography

Abstract

In recent years OPCPA and NOPCPA laser systems have shown the potential to supersede Ti: Sapphire plus nonlinear post-compression based laser systems to drive next generation attosecond light sources via direct amplification of few-cycle pulses to high pulse energies at high repetition rates. With the advent of these laser systems comes a need for improved pulse characterization technology. Due to the non-collinear interaction in NOPA based laser systems the amplified few-cycle pulses can suffer from spatio-temporal couplings. Most spatio-temporal pulse characterization techniques are based on separating spatial and temporal measurements in a test-plus reference-pulse scheme. Here we review two self-referencing techniques that are able to perform spatio-temporal pulse characterization of few-cycle pulses.