Customer Reviews

Frequency-Resolved Optical Gating: The Measurement of Ultrashort Laser Pulses

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This book covers a wide variety of FROG methods, which is just one method of complete characterization. This book does NOT give an unbiased viewpoint and does not give the shortcomings of other techniques. The author writes in a supposedly jovial manner, which is refreshing at first but soon becomes annoying and is often used to mask his one-sided viewpoint.

The background material is basic but sufficient to understand how FROG works. Many, but not all, FROG variants are covered. Many different classes of pulses are considered, giving a good flavour of the power of the method. If you work with ultrafast pulses, then I strongly recommend this book. However, also consider alternative methods by reviewing the literature (unfortunately there is no book because the researchers are busy using the devices in experiments).

Frequency-Resolved Optical Gating (FROG) combines the best parts of autocorrelation and spectrum to produce detailed information about ultrashort laser pulses. If you are involved in modelocked lasers and are no longer satisfied with the ambiguities of your autocorrelator, then get this book!
This is a collection of chapters co-authored by Rick Trebino and other big names in the ultrafast world and it is very up to date. Introductory topics in math and nonlinear optics are covered as background while the shortcomings of other methods are also discussed. All versions of Frequency-Resolved Optical Gating are covered in detail; this book covers the characterization of ultrashort laser pulses from start to finish.

In addition, iterative algorithms for processing FROG traces are available as well as PowerPoint slides for a class on ultrafast phenomena.

This well-written and user-friendly book is a MUST-HAVE for anyone working with modelocked lasers and wishing to characterize both intensity and phase information for ultrashort laser pulses.