Abstract
We retrieve intensity and phase profiles of 280 fs, 50 MHz optical pulses with 124 aJ coupled pulse energy (960 photons) by second-harmonic generation (SHG) frequency-resolved optical gating, using aperiodically poled LiNbO 3 waveguides. The strong nonlinear interaction that is due to confinement within the micrometer-sized waveguide structure and the linearly chirped poling period contribute, respectively, to high SHG efficiency and broad phase-matching bandwidth. The achieved sensitivity is 2.7 × 10 -6 mW 2 , improving on the previous record for self-referenced complete pulse characterization by 5 orders of magnitude. © 2005 Optical Society of America.