Characterization of two ultrashort laser pulses using interferometric imaging of self-diffraction

Noncollinear pulse characterization methods can be applied to over-octave spanning waveforms, but geometrical effects in the nonlinear medium such as beam smearing and critical sensitivity to beam alignment hinder their accurate application. Here, a method is introduced for the temporal and spatial characterization of two pulses by interferometric, spectrally resolved imaging of self-diffraction. Geometrical effects are resolved by the method and, therefore, do not limit the accuracy. Two methods for quantitative pulse retrieval are presented. One method is analytical and very fast; the other method is iterative and more robust if applied to noisy data.