Near-field imaging for single-shot waveform measurements

The accurate measurement of ultrashort pulses is necessary to optimize pulse compression for nonlinear optics and strong-field physics. Additionally, field-sensitive time-domain techniques enable measuring femtosecond and sub-femtosecond dynamics. In this paper, we introduce a single-shot measurement to characterize few-cycle fields. This polarization-sensitive timedomain measurement can retrieve the waveform of pulses shorter than two-cycles in duration with a temporal window of hundreds of femtoseconds. We measure how the field changes after propagation through dispersive optics, and we measure the sub-femtosecond phase shift imposed by the nonlinear intensity dependent response of a dielectric. Real-time field measurements will benefit low repetition rate systems used in strong-field physics and attosecond science, while the large temporal window compliments Fourier transform spectroscopy. Supplementary material for this article is available online