Fiber-coupled high-speed asynchronous optical sampling with sub-50 fs time resolution

Abstract

We present a fiber-coupled pump-probe system with a sub-50 fs time resolution and a nanosecond time window, based on high-speed asynchronous optical sampling. By use of a transmission grism pulse compressor, we achieve pump pulses with a pulse duration of 42 fs, an average power of 300 mW and a peak power exceeding 5 kW at a pulse repetition rate of 1 GHz after 6 m of optical fiber. With this system we demonstrate thickness mapping of soft X-ray mirrors at a sub-nm thickness resolution on a cm² scan area. In addition, terahertz field generation with resolved spectral components of up to 3.5 THz at a GHz frequency resolution is demonstrated.