Abstract

We present an entirely new approach to a mechanical rapid scanning optical delay (RSOD) for femtosecond and picosecond optics. Unlike other conventional measurement techniques, ^1,2 our RSOD is capable of scanning at speeds in excess of 500 Hz with very little mechanical vibration. We have built and demonstrated a 400-Hz RSOD with a 2.1-ps window and show that time scans as large as 20 ps or more are also possible. The attributes of high speed, low vibration, mechanical stability, simple construction, scalability to different pulse widths and spectral regions, and the potential for a large time window make this scanning time delay technique an attractive tool both for autocorrelation displays and for high-speed data acquisition^3,4 in pump-probe experiments.

© 1993 Optical Society of America