Improvements in picosecond chronography

The durations of laser pulses as short as 1 picosecond have been measured with an electro-optical streak camera. The time resolution limit of the camera system has been directly and unambiguously demonstrated employing a flashlamp pumped mode-locked dye laser to reliably generate tunable-frequency pulses of duration between 1 and 2 psec. An argon laser pumped C.W. mode-locked dye laser has been developed using the streak camera as a diagnostic tool, to produce continuous streams of picosecond pulses. With the high light gain of the camera system, pulses of peak powers < 1 watt can be studied with picosecond time resolution. The build-up of picosecond pulses from the initial photon noise of the mode-locked laser has also been directly recorded for the first time