A New Triple Correlation Technique For Measuring Ultrashort Laser-Pulses

A new triple correlation technique for measuring the complete intensity profile of ultrashort optical pulses is described. The triple correlation preserves the phase information of the input pulse so that a reconstruction of the triply correlated signal will provide a unique reconstruction of the input. The new technique described here uses two second-order, nonlinear optical interactions for the generation of a triply correlated signal. A derivation of the measured triple-correlation signal and the pulse reconstruction is given. The effects of noise on the measured signal are also examined.