100% Reliable Frequency-Resolved Optical Gating Pulse-Retrieval Algorithmic Approach

Frequency-resolved optical gating (FROG) is widely used to measure ultrashort laser pulses, also providing an excellent indication of pulse-shape instabilities by disagreement between measured and retrieved FROG traces. FROG, however, requires -- but currently lacks -- an extremely reliable pulse-re...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2019-01
Main Authors: Jafari, Rana, Trebino, Rick
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Computer simulation
Convergence
Retrieval
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Frequency-resolved optical gating (FROG) is widely used to measure ultrashort laser pulses, also providing an excellent indication of pulse-shape instabilities by disagreement between measured and retrieved FROG traces. FROG, however, requires -- but currently lacks -- an extremely reliable pulse-retrieval algorithm. So, this work provides one. It uses a simple procedure for directly retrieving the precise pulse spectrum from the measured trace. Additionally, it implements a multi-grid scheme, also quickly yielding a vastly improved guess for the spectral phase before implementing the entire measured trace. As a result, it achieves 100% convergence for the three most common variants of FROG for pulses with time-bandwidth products as high as 100, even with traces contaminated with noise. Here we consider the polarization-gate (PG) and transient-grating (TG) variants of FROG, which measure amplified, UV, and broadly tunable pulses. Convergence occurs for all of the >20,000 simulated noisy PG/TG FROG traces considered and is also faster.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1811.11100