Phase-matching spectral phase measurement and domain period reconstruction of aperiodic quasi-phase matched gratings by nonlinear spectral interferometry.

We experimentally measured the phase-matching spectral phases of aperiodic quasi-phase matched gratings for the first time (to the best of our knowledge) by nonlinear spectral interferometry. The retrieved information is useful in determining the temporal shape of the nonlinearly converted ultrafast signal and reconstructing the slowly-varying domain period distribution. The method is nondestructive, fast, sensitive, accurate, and applicable to different nonlinear materials. Compared to taking microscopic images of the etched crystal surface, our method can directly measure the domain period distribution in the crystal interior and is free of the artificial random duty period error due to image concatenation.