Measuring the chirp of an ultrashort laser pulse at the noise floor

摘要

We extract the chirp of an ultrashort laser pulse accurately in real-time using a simple modified auto-interferometric correlation (MOSAIC) technique. Through the use of our newly developed time-domain algorithm, chirp information is accessible with signal-to-noise levels approaching unity. Correction algorithms have been developed to accommodate signal distortions due to bandwidth limitations, autocorrelator misalignment, and non-quadratic detector response.