Reconfigurable wavefront sensor for ultrashort pulses

Opt Lett. 2012 Apr 1;37(7):1154-6. doi: 10.1364/OL.37.001154.

Abstract

A highly flexible Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor for ultrashort pulse diagnostics is presented. The temporal system performance is studied in detail. Reflective operation is enabled by programming tilt-tolerant microaxicons into a liquid-crystal-on-silicon spatial light modulator. Nearly undistorted pulse transfer is obtained by generating nondiffracting needle beams as subbeams. Reproducible wavefront analysis and spatially resolved second-order autocorrelation are demonstrated at incident angles up to 50° and pulse durations down to 6 fs.