| An experiment has been designed to investigate the scattering of femtosecond laser pulses from small dielectric scatterers. Using a Colliding Pulse Mode-locked laser as the source of femtosecond pulses, both time averaged angular, and time resolved scattering measurements have been made. These measurements have been made for pulses that exhibit a spatial length that ranges from smaller than through larger than the dimensions of the scatterer. For the time averaged angular scattering case, the experimental results are compared to theoretical predictions. In the case of time resolved scattering, two techniques for making these measurements are presented, along with the results of each technique for plate and cylindrical scatterers. These results are then discussed in light of expected time resolved scattering based on geometric optics arguments. |
