Document Type

Thesis

Publication Date

2014

Disciplines

Physics

Advisor

Adam Whitten

Abstract

Precise ultrashort light pulse measurements are critical in many physics experiments using ultrafast lasers. A Frequency-Resolved Optical Gating (FROG) system can efficiently and accurately record these desired measurements. FROGs split the input laser beam, delay half of the beam, and overlap both halves in a nonlinear medium. The resulting beam allows the retrieval of phase and duration information. A data file is created by the FROG software that includes beam intensity measurements. By using genetic and iterative algorithms, the intensity data can be manipulated in order to retrieve the pulse duration and phase information. One focus of this research was to align the FROG and crosscheck the measurements with a commercially-built FROG. The other component of this research was to determine a way to interpret intensity data from the laser using genetic and iterative algorithms together. Correct interpretations of the intensity data result in pulse duration and phase measurements.

Comments

Readers: Yu Zhang, Dean Langley

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