Method and apparatus for measuring a time delay between pairs of pulses from laser pulse sequences, and applications thereof

A laser pulse sequence measuring apparatus being configured for tracking a delay between a pair of pulses from two laser pulse sequences, said delay comprising a temporal separation between the pulses of said pair of pulses, said apparatus comprising

• at least one pulse laser source device being arranged for creating a first laser pulse sequence of first laser pulses and a second laser pulse sequence of second laser pulses, and
• a delay signal generation device being arranged for generating a delay signal which is a quantitative measure of the delay between the pair of pulses from the first and second laser pulse sequences, wherein
• the delay signal generation device includes a difference frequency generation medium and an electro-optic sampling medium,
• the difference frequency generation medium is arranged for creating intra-pulse difference frequency generation pulses by applying intra-pulse difference frequency generation to the first laser pulses,
• the delay signal generation device is configured for providing phase-stable reference waveforms based on the intra-pulse difference frequency generation pulses, and
• the electro-optic sampling medium is arranged for electro-optic sampling an electric field of the phase-stable reference waveforms with sampling pulses being derived from the second laser pulses, for generating an electro-optic sampling signal, wherein the delay signal is obtained from the electro-optic sampling signal.