FEMTOMETER™

Few cycle pulse characterization

Today fs-laser pulses are easily available, but in order to measure such short pulse durations you need a highly sophisticated device – such as the FEMTOMETER™. This is an autocorrelator based on a Michelson interferometer, which is used to produce two equal pulse components travelling on different paths. One of these pulse components experiences a variable delay before both are recombined and focused into a very thin nonlinear crystal. Based on a dispersion optimized design and by using a very thin BBO crystal, the FEMTOMETER™ is capable of measuring down to 5 fs pulses! This is at the limit of theoretically measurable pulse durations by interference autocorrelation, taking into account the minimal available thickness for the applied nonlinear crystals. The everyday alignment procedure of the FEMTOMETER™ is simple and done by adjusting only one translation stage (to achieve temporal overlap) and one optical mount (to achieve spatial overlap). With its minimized footprint the FEMTOMETER™ saves precious space on your optical table. By incorporating miniature optomechanical components, the dimensions of this enhanced model will be reduced to 156.5 x 127 x 49,5 mm (detector included). The minimum average input power of 5 mW offers the possibility to measure the pulse duration online while you are performing your measurements. This input power can be extract from your probe beam by using the appropriate beam splitter. Depending on the measured pulse duration and the repetition rate the update rate can amount up to several Hz, which further adds to the comfort of the alignment procedure.