GRENOUILLE

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Grating-eliminated no-nonsense observation of ultrafast incident laser light e-fields (GRENOUILLE) is an ultrashort pulse measurement technique based on frequency-resolved optical gating (FROG).

[edit] The basics

Because most FROG techniques have an autocorrelator, they also have the sensitive alignment issues that come with it. In addition, most FROGs use a thin second harmonic generation (SHG) crystal and a spectrometer, adding signal strength requirements as well as additional alignment issues. GRENOUILLE is a simple device based on the SHG FROG. GRENOUILLE replaces the beam splitter, delay line and beam recombination components of the autocorrelator with a prism while the spectrometer and thin SHG crystal combination is replaced by a thick SHG crystal. The effect of these replacements is to eliminate all sensitive alignment parameters while at the same time increasing the signal strength. These changes also reduce the complexity and cost of this type of system. Like the previous FROG systems however, GRENOUILLE still determines the full phase and intensity data of a pulse. GRENOUILLE produces traces identical in form to those from SHG FROG.

A typical GRENOUILLE setup.

A typical GRENOUILLE setup used with a theoretical square input beam can be seen above. The first element, a horizontal cylindrical lens, is used to tightly focus the incoming signal beam into a horizontal stripe at the thick SHG crystal in order to yield a range of crystal incidence angles (more on this below). While being focused, the beam is passed through a Fresnel biprism with an apex angle close to 180°. The Fresnel biprism is essentially two thin prisms joined at their base. The effect of this element is to split the beam into two sources and superimpose the two at the focus point in the SHG crystal, thus mapping delay to horizontal position. This replaces the function of the autocorrelator in the original FROG designs. However, unlike the autocorrelator, the beams from the Fresnel biprism are automatically aligned in time and space, eliminating a number of sensitive alignment parameters.

The thick SHG crystal in this setup performs two duties. The two identical beams from the biprism cross in the crystal with a delay that varies in the horizontal direction, which is effectively a self-gating process. The second function of the SHG crystal is to act as the spectrometer by converting horizontal incidence angle into wavelength. The limited phase-matching bandwidth of the crystal causes the generated wavelength to vary with incidence angle. Thus, the initial focusing must be tight enough to include the entire spectrum of the pulse. After the SHG crystal, a set of cylindrical lenses is used to image the signal onto a camera with wavelength mapped vertically while delay is mapped horizontally.

To sum up for clarity, there are a number of things occurring in the crystal. First, the two beams or pulses from the biprism are being crossed at a very large angle which acts as a single-shot autocorrelator, self-gating the pulse to produce varying delay in the horizontal direction. In the vertical direction, the limited phasematched bandwidth of the crystal phasematches a different small portion of the input pulse bandwidth for each incidence angle, effectively acting as a spectrometer. The end result is the wavelength spectrum in the vertical direction for each amount of delay in the horizontal direction.