Abstract

The propagation of optical wave-packets (WP) in nonlinear media leads in general the reshaping of the initial pulse into a complex spatio-temporal structure and non-trivial light distribution, as observed in recent experiments [1]. As a consequence, a complete 3-dimensional (3D) characterization of the light distribution of optical wave-packets is needed. Actually, most of the existing methods for pulse diagnostic (i.e. FROG and SPIDER) provide information in a space of reduced dimensionality, while imaging of spatially localized beams unavoidably produces a loss of information due to their long integration time. Nevertheless, in the last years some 3D imaging techniques based on time-resolved imaging using an optical gate have been proposed and developed, and have also been used to follow the temporal evolution of wavefronts or pulses.

© 2004 Optical Society of America