Timing jitter measurement of transmitted laser pulse relative to the reference using type II second harmonic generation in two nonlinear crystals

A new method is proposed and analyzed for measuring the timing jitter of the transmitted pulse relative to the reference pulse using two type II phase-matched nonlinear crystals for second harmonic generation (SHG). The polarizations of the two pulses are exchanged in two crystals and the difference between two detected second harmonic signals can reflect the transmitted jitter. This new method provides a high sensitivity and timing resolution compared with the conventional RF (radio frequency) method. Since the overlapping levels in the two crystals are the same, the final output is zero when there is no time delay between the two pulses. Thus no offset is necessary to be subtracted from the final output and no time delay adjustment is required between the two pulses, compared with the previous optical method using one crystal and two dichroic beamsplitters. The jitter measuring performance is studied theoretically using non-stationary nonlinear wave-coupled equations for type II SHG of two pulses. The theoretical computation and analysis show that the sensitivity and the dynamic range of this new method depend on pulse width, crystal pulses and group velocity difference between two fundamental pulses. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America