Absolute phase measurement by using femtosecond laser spectral interference technique

A method for measurement of the absolute phase by using femtosecond laser spectral interference technique has been reported. Theoretical simulation indicates that the interference fringes of double femtosecond laser pulses are significantly different when phase difference between the double femtosecond laser pulses is different. An experimental apparatus based on a Michelson interferometer devices is built, in which one femtosecond laser pulse is split into two pulses in half by a beam splitter (BS), each pulse is reflected by mirrors and the two pulses are then reunited. The double femtosecond laser pulses interfere with each other and are focused on a spectrometer to record the spectral interference fringes. By applying Fourier transformation to the recorded spectral interference signal, we retrieve the absolute phase between the double femtosecond laser pulses. Theory analysis and experiment results show that this method is reasonable and efficient, which present a new application of femtosecond laser interference. We believe that the method reported in this paper provides a useful approach for measuring the absolute phase which should have applications in determining thickness and measuring refractive index of optical samples.

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