A pulse-front-tilt–compensated streaked optical spectrometer with high throughput and picosecond time resolution

A high-throughput, broadband optical spectrometer coupled to the Rochester optical streak system equipped with a Photonis P820 streak tube was designed to record time-resolved spectra with 1-ps time resolution. Spectral resolution of 0.8 nm is achieved over a wavelength coverage range of 480 to 580 nm, using a 300-groove/mm diffraction grating in conjunction with a pair of 225-mm-focal-length doublets operating at an f/2.9 aperture. Overall pulse-front tilt across the beam diameter generated by the diffraction grating is reduced by preferentially delaying discrete segments of the collimated input beam using a 34-element reflective echelon optic. The introduced delay temporally aligns the beam segments and the net pulse-front tilt is limited to the accumulation across an individual sub-element. The resulting spectrometer design balances resolving power and pulse-front tilt while maintaining high throughput.