Measurement of single cycle and sub-cycle pulse duration

This paper suggests that the linear interferometric correlation (LFC) can be used to measure pulse duration of a few cycles, single cycle or even sub-cycle light pulse. The relations between pulsewidth and LFC curve are derived for Gaussian- and hyperbolic secant-shaped pules. This new method abandons focusing,frequency doubling and filtering in the traditional second order correlation method, meanwhile the signalto-noise ratio (SNR) is improved.