Time-of-flight analysis of light pulses with a temporal resolution of 100 ps

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Abstract
This article describes a new, direct way to measure the time evolution of single light pulses in the subnanosecond region using time‐of‐flight analysis. The light pulse is coupled into a set of 40 optical fibers of increasing length arranged in an array. The output of the fiber array is imaged onto a fast gated optical imager (gatewidth 100 ps) coupled to a CCD camera (12 bit). The intensified part of the pulse of each fiber corresponds to the intensity of the light pulse at a different time due to the different transmission time of each fiber. Additional, two‐dimensional (2D) spatial resolution is possible if image guides are used instead of fibers. The temporal resolution is limited by the gatewidth of the detector. The difference in length between the longest and the shortest fiber determines the total period of time displayed by the system (1 ns). The pulse characteristics of a recently developed short‐pulse Raman‐excimer laser are analyzed as an example of an application. Laser parameters like pulse length, energy stability, and jitter are measured with the fiber array.

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