Pulse characterization by THG d-scan in absorbing nonlinear media

We report on few-cycle pulse characterization based on third harmonic generation dispersion scan (THG d-scan) measurements using thin films of different TiO2-SiO2 compositions as nonlinear media. By changing the TiO2 concentration in the thin film the band gap and therefore the position of the absorption edge were varied. The retrieved pulse durations from different nonlinear media agree within 5%, and the reconstructed pulse shapes prove to be immune against the absorption edges as well. The reason is the robust retrieval algorithm which takes the influence of wavelength dependent nonlinearity into account by a spectral weight function. (c) 2014 Optical Society of America