A long-arm autocorrelator for measurement of pico- to nanosecond laser pulse widths

Pulsed microchip lasers have become useful in a broad area of applications due to their robustness and low cost. The pulse widths of these lasers are typically from tens of picoseconds to a few nanoseconds, a range that has proved to be either difficult or costly to characterize by currently available instrumentation. As a cost-effective and sufficient solution for microchip laser characterization an autocorrelator was built. This long-arm (400 mm) intensity autocorrelator was designed to be easy to align and tolerant to non-idealities of the mechanical scanning process. Standard measurements were fully automated.