Characterizing ultrashort laser pulses with second harmonic dispersion scans

The dispersion scan (d-scan) technique has emerged as a simple-to-implement characterization method for ultrashort laser pulses. D-scan traces are intuitive to interpret and retrieval algorithms that are both fast and robust have been developed to obtain the spectral phase and the temporal pulse profile. Here, we give a review of the d-scan technique based on second harmonic generation. We describe and compare recent implementations for the characterization of few- and multi-cycle pulses as well as two different approaches for recording d-scan traces in single-shot, thus showing the versatility of the technique.