NOISY-LIGHT CORRELATION-FUNCTIONS BY FREQUENCY-RESOLVED OPTICAL GATING

A new technique for measuring the time-and frequency-dependent intensi ties and phases of correlation functions of broadband, non-transform-l imited (noisy) light is presented. It is based on others' successful p revious efforts to measure the intensities and phases of short pulses by frequency-resolved optical gating. It is shown that a simplified al gorithm based on the original algorithm for frequency-resolved optical gating is sufficient for the recovery of correlation functions. The f irst experimental realizations of this technique are presented, and th e recovered noisy-light correlation functions are shown. By way of ill ustration, the dispersion of water is quantified. Applications to inte rferometrically time-resolved nonlinear optical spectroscopies are dis cussed. (C) 1998 Optical Society of America.