The accurate measurement of ultrafast pulses is extremely
important
in both academic and industrial fields. Revealing fast- and slow-varying
pulse information simultaneously still remains a considerable challenge
in ultrafast science. We propose a novel ultrafast measurement method,
termed the “optical chirplet transform for observing pulse
ultrafast structures (OCTOPUS)”, to measure the spectrotemporal
transient information on pulses. This approach slices a measured pulse
into a series of orthogonal chirplet bases and transforms it into
the corresponding Fourier-transform-limited pulse (FTLP) through a
phase editing process, in which a programmable waveshaper iteratively
achieves the mirror image of the measured pulse’s phase spectrum
relative to the theoretical FTLP. As a result, the ultrafast pulse
field is accurately reconstructed assisted by phase spectrum retrieval.
This method can both reconstruct transient fast-varying pulse fields
with higher resolution and accuracy and measure other pulse information
such as phase distribution and slow-varying envelope, advancing progress
in ultrafast measurement technology.