Optical system and method for ultrashort laser pulse characterization

An optical system for ultrashort laser pulse characterization, comprising:

• an element to introduce a controlled chirp, negative or positive, to an incoming ultrashort laser pulse to be characterized, said ultrashort laser pulse being a single laser pulse;
• a nonlinear optical element, with normal or anomalous dispersion, through which said chirped single ultrashort laser pulse is propagated, said nonlinear optical element having the property to generate a nonlinear signal from the ultrashort laser pulse and to emit the generated nonlinear signal transversally to the propagation direction, wherein as a result of said propagation:
• different chirp values are introduced by the dispersion of the nonlinear optical element itself in the ultrashort laser pulse at different propagation distances along the nonlinear optical element, and
• a transverse nonlinear signal is generated in a direction perpendicular to the propagation axis from said ultrashort laser pulse having different chirp values introduced by the corresponding propagation distance within the nonlinear optical element, said transverse nonlinear signal being a transverse second harmonic generation signal (TSHG);
• an analyzing unit comprising an imaging spectrometer configured to record a single-shot spectral image of said generated transverse nonlinear signal;
• and
• a processing module comprising one or more processors configured to execute a numerical iterative algorithm to said recorded single-shot spectral image to retrieve the electric field, amplitude and phase, of the single ultrashort laser pulse, thereby laser pulse reconstruction being possible to be performed with the same set-up at different central wavelengths, while the laser pulse duration range extends from few-cycle regimes to the hundreds of femtoseconds.