Measurement of the Width of Ultrashort Optical Pulses with a Streak Camera

Abstract

The streak camera is an ultrahigh speed detector which captures light emission phenomena occurring in extremely short time periods. In this work the operating principles of a synchroscan streak camera are introduced and an example of how the streak camera is used to measure the pulse width of ultrashort optical pulses generated from actively mode-locked uncoated ridge waveguide structure InGaAsP diode lasers having an external diffraction grating cavity is shown. The pulse duration measured by an ultrafast streak camera is as short as 13 ps at 1.3 mu m and 29 ps at 1.55 mu m at a repetition rate of 1 GHz.