title: Poor man's source for sub 7 fs: a simple route to ultrashort laser pulses and their full characterization.
abstract: A practicable and economic method for the generation and full characterization of laser pulses ranging down to sub 7 fs duration with energies spanning the full microJ domain is presented. The method utilizes a self-induced and self-guiding filamentation of titanium-sapphire based, amplified pulses in air for spectral broadening, a standard chirp mirror compression scheme and transient grating frequency resolved optical gating for determining the spectral phase over the full visible to near infrared range. In this manner, few-cycle laser pulses with a high quality in the spatial beam profile have been generated in an robust arrangement with a minimal amount of standard optical components for their full characterization. The optical scheme demonstrates an uncomplicated, versatile access to this regime of pulsed laser radiation accompanied by a comprehensive analysis.
authors: Institut für Experimentalphysik, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
authors: Bruno E
authors: BE
authors: Schmidt
authors: Waldemar
authors: W
authors: Unrau
authors: Aldo
authors: A
authors: Mirabal
authors: Shaohui
authors: S
authors: Li
authors: Marcel
authors: M
authors: Krenz
authors: Ludger
authors: L
authors: Wöste
authors: Torsten
authors: T
authors: Siebert
mesh_terms: D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D007834:Lasers; D007909:Lenses; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation*