Characterization of Few-Cycle Laser Pulses

Near-infrared, few-cycle laser pulses are an important tool for state-of-the-art spectroscopy methods. However, their characterization brings about challenges as the femtosecond field transients are out of reach for electronic devices. Therefore, the objective of this thesis is the characterization of such laser pulses by means of two different techniques, namely the dispersion scan and attosecond streaking. Both methods were set up and are—together with the underlying theory—reviewed in detail. The dispersion scan has the goal of retrieving the spectral phase of the laser pulses by using an iterative algorithm, which was implemented and is evaluated here. Measurement results demonstrate the usefullness of the dispersion scan for day-to-day pulse characterization. For the attosecond streaking setup with its newly developed design, first test measurements are reported here. The electron time-of-flight spectrometer at the heart of the attosecond streaking setup extends the scope of the existing attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy beamline towards photoelectron studies and the characterization of attosecond pulses from high-order harmonic generation