Multi‐shot pulse‐shape measurements of trains of ultrashort pulses with unstable pulse shapes are studied. Measurement techniques considered include spectral‐phase interferometry for direct electric‐field reconstruction (SPIDER), second harmonic generation frequency‐resolved optical gating (FROG), polarization gate FROG, and cross‐correlation FROG. An analytical calculation and simulations show that SPIDER cannot see unstable pulse‐shape components and only measures the coherent artifact. Further, the presence of this instability cannot be distinguished from benign misalignment effects in SPIDER. FROG methods yield a better, although necessarily rough, estimate of the pulse shape and also indicate instability by exhibiting disagreement between measured and retrieved traces. Only good agreement between measured and retrieved FROG traces or 100% SPIDER fringe visibility guarantees a stable pulse train.

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We further develop a simple device, called Spatially and Temporally Resolved Intensity and Phase Evaluation Device: Full Information from a Single Hologram (STRIPED FISH), for measuring the complete spatiotemporal intensity and phase, Ix; y; t and ϕx; y; t, respectively, of an arbitrary ultrashort pulse on a single camera frame (and hence, on a single shot). We have increased the measurable bandwidth, eliminated most aberrations, and improved the uniformity of the multiple holograms in the device. We demonstrate these improvements by making single-camera-frame measurements of spatiotemporally complex subpicosecond crossed and chirped pulses from a Ti:sapphire oscillator. In order to display the massive resulting data files-pairs of four-dimensional intensityand-phase data-we also develop a method for generating intuitive movies of the measured pulses. With these improvements, this device and its resulting movies should be able to perform and intuitively display true singleshot spatiotemporal measurements of most current ultrashort pulses.

Issues important for new ultrashort-pulse-measurement techniques include the generation of theoretical example traces for common pulses, validity ranges, ambiguities, coherent artifacts, device calibration sensitivity, iterative retrieval convergence, and feedback regarding measurement accuracy. Unfortunately, in the past, such issues have gone unconsidered, yielding long histories of unsatisfactory measurements. We review these issues here in the hope that future proposers of new techniques will consider them without delay, and, as an example, we address them for a relatively new technique: self-referenced spectral interferometry.