Method to precisely measure the phase of few-cycle laser pulses

A new method of accurately measuring the carrier-envelope phase (CEP) of few-cycle pulses is presented. The high-energy photo-electron spectrum by a few-cycle pulse is dominated by photoelectrons bursting in very few short time intervals near the maximum of the pulse envelope. For high laser intensities, the positions of interference fringes in the high-energy cutoff region are very sensitive to the CEP, which can be used to measure and stabilize the CEP precisely. The measurement precision of the CEP strongly depends on the laser intensity for the fastest photoelectrons.