Measurement of the duration of high-power uitrashort optical pulses

An analysis is made of sound generation in the interaction between two orthogonally polarized components of a high-power uitrashort light pulse in an anisotropic crystal exhibiting electrostriction. It is shown that the envelope of an acoustic pulse takes the form of the autocorrelation function of the complex amplitude of the uitrashort pulse and its duration is between 6 and 7 orders of magnitude greater than that of the uitrashort pulse.