All-reflective high fringe contrast autocorrelator for measurement of ultrabroadband optical pulses

We describe an all-reflective interferometric autocorrelator designed to measure ultrabroadband optical pulses in the UV through IR spectral regions. By carefully choosing the device geometry we are able to obtain approximations for the nonlinear autocorrelation functions that reduce computation times to values acceptable for use in iterative pulse reconstruction schemes. We describe the optical design, autocorrelation functions, and present proof-of-principle experimental results measuring 20.6 fs pulses with a transform limit of 9.6 fs. © 2006 Optical Society of America.