Spatio-temporal characterization of the electric field of ultrashort optical pulses using two-dimensional shearing interferometry

We report the complete spatio-temporal characterization of ultrashort light pulses using a self-referencing device based on shearing interferometry in the space and frequency domains. The apparatus combines spectral phase interferometry for direct electric field reconstruction with a spectrally resolved spatial shearing interferometer. The electric field as a function of one transverse spatial coordinate and time is obtained by means of a direct algebraic phase-reconstruction algorithm. The method has been tested on several common laboratory situations in which space–time coupling is quantified.