Interference without an interferometer: a different approach to measuring, compressing, and shaping ultrashort laser pulses

Abstract

The inherent brevity of ultrashort laser pulses prevents a direct measurement of their electric field as a function of time; therefore different approaches based on autocorrelation have been used to characterize them. We present a discussion, guided by experimental studies, regarding accurate measurement, compression, and shaping of ultrashort laser pulses without autocorrelation or interferometry. Our approach based on phase shaping, multiphoton intrapulse interference phase scan, provides a direct measurement of the spectral phase. Illustrations of this method include new results demonstrating wavelength independence, compatibility with sub-5 fs pulses, and a perfect match for experimental coherent control and biomedical imaging applications.

Phase control of femtosecond pulses on the nanoscale using second harmonic nanoparticles

“…10 The SH has also been used for both pulse characterization and compression with the so-called multiphoton intrapulse interference phase scan (MIIPS) technique. 11,12 In this work, we have used MIIPS as a method for measuring and compensating for the phase distortions of a laser pulse after passage through a high numerical aperture (NA) microscope objective. In its standard implementation, MIIPS makes use of a bulk SH crystal and a pulse shaper to retrieve the spectral phase of a laser pulse and to correct for the phase distortions introduced by the optics.…”

Optical response of fluorescent molecules studied by synthetic femtosecond laser pulses

“…The dispersed spectrum covered 600 SLM pixels with a resolution of 0.32 nm per pixel. High-order phase distortions introduced by the optics in the laser system as well as by the setup are compensated by the multiphoton intrapulse interference phase scan (MIIPS) [4] software resulting in 35 fs transform limited (TL) pulses at the sample. Examples of the phase and amplitude modulations required for pulses separated by 25.27 fs (out of phase), 25.935 fs (in quadrature) and 26.6 fs (in phase) are shown in Figure 1b.…”

Pulse-Shaping Techniques Theory and Experimental Implementations for Femtosecond Pulses

“…Many different kind of experiments have benefit from optimization by feedback loop such as multiphoton microscopy or coherent control ( fig.14). This feedback can be either used to optimize the pulse shape [Coello 2008], or to directly optimize an experimental result by blind algorithms [Assion 1998, Brixner 2000. Refreshing rate of standard LC SLM is about few tens of millisecond.…”