Characterization of two-color ultrashort laser pulses using polarization-gating and transient-grating frequency-resolved optical gating

Two-color ultrashort laser pulses have emerging applications in numerous areas of science and technology. In many cases, the slightest change in the combined electric field of a two-color pulse greatly affects its interaction mechanism with the system. Therefore, a precise characterization of the temporal/spectral profile of the combined electric field is of great importance. In this work, we demonstrate that a full characterization is possible using the well-known transient-grating (TG) or polarization-gating (PG) frequency-resolved optical gating (FROG) techniques, and by employing the recently developed Retrieved-Amplitude N-grid Algorithmic (RANA) approach for the retrieval process. We demonstrate the validity of using these techniques and this approach for multi-cycle and few-cycle pulses in the absence and presence of noise. (C) 2022 Optica Publishing Group