Determination of the duration of fluctuating picosecond optical pulses

A theoretical analysis is made of the influence of fluctuations in the parameters of picosecond optical pulses on the determination of their duration from the autocorrelation function. It is shown that distortions of the autocorrelation function are governed by the degree of correlation between fluctuations of the duration and power of picosecond pulses. The variances of the fluctuations of the pulse power and duration, and also the degree of correlation between them were determined experimentally for radiation from a mode-locked YAG:Nd³⁺ laser.