Analysis of the measurement of polarization-shaped ultrashort laser pulses by tomographic ultrafast retrieval of transverse light E fields

摘要

We consider in detail the technique of tomographic ultrafast retrieval of transverse light E fields (TURTLE) for measuring the evolution of an arbitrary, potentially complex, and ultrashort laser pulse's intensity-and-phase and polarization-state evolutions in time. TURTLE involves making three ultrashort-pulse measurements using established single-polarization pulse-measurement techniques. Two of the measurements are of the pulse's orthogonal linear polarizations (e.g., horizontal and vertical) and the third occurs for an arbitrary additional polarization angle (e.g., 45 degrees). If the field projections are measured using second-harmonic-generation frequency-resolved optical gating, we demonstrate that a simple optimization can accurately and reliably retrieve the time-dependent polarization state, even for very complex polarization-shaped pulses.