Temporal decorrelation of short laser pulses

We describe a unique approach for extracting the temporal profile of ultrashort laser pulses from typical autocorrelation measurements. The use of the constraint that intensity is a nonnegative quantity enables an iterative numerical algorithm to reconstruct pulse shapes in a one-dimensional procedure. With the reconstruction of the intensity profile, the Gerchberg–Saxton algorithm can be used to retrieve the phase of the electric field from a spectral measurement. Because these procedures are carried out in one dimension, they are numerically much faster than two-dimensional techniques such as frequency-resolved optical gating. Their high computational efficiency can save substantial time by constructing good trial solutions for the more accurate but slower procedure of frequency-resolved optical gating. © 1998 Optical Society of America [S0740-3224(98)00301-4] OCIS codes: 320.7100, 070.2590, 070.5010.