Now that the laser is repaired, I’ll be able to really get the shear waves and DAC goals on the road, I think. But, both of them would profit by some means to increase the pulse duration, which is 3.5×10-13 seconds long. If I can extend it to 2×10-10 seconds, then I’ll probably stop frying my samples… and I REALLY don’t want to fry the diamonds of the DAC!
To build the grating stretcher, I should:
Compute the needed GVD with the 10nm of bandwidth I have.
Get the right grating with the right number of grooves/mm and a blaze for 1030nm light.
Build it in the folded geometry!
Now, a FROG (Frequency Resolved Optical Gating) is a means by which to characterize the pulse and make sure that I’ve done with it what I need to (i.e. to make it 200picoseconds long). In order to do this, I need to:
Get a spectrometer centered at 515nm or so
Get a computerized translation stage with the right amount of travel
Write the software
Get the optics (mounts, BBO crystal cut for 1030nm, etc)
Get a breadboard and build it
The autocorrelator would be the same thing as a FROG, just a photodiode instead of a spectrometer. So, maybe I’ll start with that…
