Broadband short pulse measurement by autocorrelation with a sum-frequency generation set-up

Previous spectral and laser pulse length measurements carried out on the CLIO FEL at wavelength λ=8.5 μm suggested that very short light pulses could be generated, about 500 fs wide (FWHM). For these measurements a Michelson interferometer with a Te crystal, as a non-linear detector, was used as a second order autocorrelation device. More recent measurements in similar conditions have confirmed that the laser pulses observed are indeed single: they are not followed by other pulses distant by the slippage length Nλ. As the single micropulse length is likely to depend on the slippage, more measurements at different wavelengths would be useful. This is not directly possible with our actual interferometer set-up, based on a phase-matched non-linear crystal. However, we can use the broadband non-linear medium provided by one of our users' experiments: Sum-Frequency Generation over surfaces. With such autocorrelation set-up, interference fringes are no more visible, but this is largely compensated by the frequency range provided. First tests at 8 μm have already been performed to validate the technic, leading to results similar to those obtained with our previous Michelson set-up