Spatiotemporal characterization of ultrashort laser pulses using spatially resolved Fourier transform spectrometry

We present a method for characterizing ultrashort laser pulses in space and time, based on spatially resolved Fourier transform spectrometry. An unknown pulse is interfered with a delayed, spatially uniform reference on a CCD camera. The reference pulse is created by spatially filtering a portion of the unknown pulse. By scanning the delay between the two pulses, an interferogram is obtained at each pixel, allowing us to determine the spatially resolved phase difference between the unknown pulse and the reference pulse. High-resolution spatiotemporal characterization of an ultrashort pulse is demonstrated, and the sensitivity of the method to spatiotemporal coupling is shown for the case of a pulse with pulse front tilt. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America