Summary of the Project

Since the invention of the laser, there has been a fast race to develop new sources, in particular in the field of ultrafast pulsed lasers, with durations in the range of the femtosecond (1 fs=10^-15 s). New techniques for the measurement of those pulses are every time under development to characterize the new laser sources in the temporal domain.

However, it was necessary to introduce a new robust and reliable technique for the measurement of time dependent polarization pulses, capable to extend this characterization to the spatiotemporal domain.

This full characterization was not available before the execution of this project and it is very useful for the applications of ultrashort lasers.

The main aim of the project is to develop new cutting-edge techniques for the full spatiotemporal measurement of ultrashort pulses with arbitrary time-evolving polarization, providing new information from the experiments that was unavailable to obtained with other existing techniques.

For the measurement of ultrashort pulses with arbitrary time-evolving polarization, a new technique has been developed. The concept for the technique was first envisaged (see image) and then was tested through simulations. The technique was validated with trivial cases and then it was applied to some cases of interest known as polarization gates.

Regarding the full spatiotemporal polarization measurement, the experienced researcher combined the previous technique with spatiotemporal characterization based on spectral interferometry. The scheme used provides the full information of the pulse. It has been applied to complex cases and it has successfully retrieved the pulse characterization. A first research paper is under preparation.

The developments carried out during the execution of the project have expanded the previous limits in the characterization of ultrashort laser pulses. In particular, the full measurement of the spatiotemporal polarization of the pulses has been reached for the first time. This achievement will improve or open new applications of those laser sources.

The new techniques developed can be commercially exploited, thus improving the European position in the market of the characterization of pulsed lasers.