Coherent matter waves for ultrafast laser pulse characterization

A technique for the characterization of ultrashort laser pulses using coherent matter waves is demonstrated. We emphasize the analogy between matter wave packets and electromagnetic wave packets propagating in dispersive media. Due to quadratic dispersion the wave packets are stretched and their temporal structure eventually converges to their spectrum, thus providing a possibility for energy measurements in conjugate space. This is demonstrated theoretically and experimentally and is the basis for our laser pulse characterization technique. We use energy resolved interferometrically recorded photoelectron spectra generated by above-threshold ionization in an autocorrelation setup to characterize ultrashort laser pulses at 800 nm wavelength. This approach is potentially applicable to the XUV wavelength region.