Few-cycle Pulse Diagnostics Using Plateau Harmonics

摘要

We show that the strength of the central electric field peaks in a few-cycle laser pulse can be recovered from a frequency-time image of the high harmonic spectrum generated in a gas volume. A simple observable is defined that provides a gauge of the carrier-envelope phase for pulse durations up to three optical cycles, corresponding to 8 fs FWHM at the Ti:sapphire wavelength of 800 nm.