Timing measurement is crucial for ultrafast high-precision position detection and characterization of nonrepetitive physical processes in ultrafast lasers. In this work, we showed that timing jitter measurements at the attosecond level could be achieved by using a time-stretched self-coherent detection (TSSCD) system. A piezoelectric transducer was placed in the signal arm of the detection system and driven with a sinusoidal signal to induce the timing jitter signal to be measured. The modulation-induced fast timing jitter was then characterized by using a chirped swept signal. The TSSCD system had a high-frequency noise floor of about 2 × ${10}^{-13}{\mathrm{fs}}^2$/Hz and an integrated timing jitter noise less than 5 as. The measured timing jitter amplitude determined from integration of the power spectral density varied linearly with the driving voltage with a fitting $R^2$ of 0.99999, and a timing jitter amplitude as low as about 1 as could be measured. The experimental results agree well with the results from numerical simulations. By using ultrafast high-precision measurements, an attosecond-level timing jitter emulated by a random 8-level pulse amplitude modulated sinusoidal signal is successfully measured, indicating its potential for application in optical signal data processing and communications.

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• Fluctuations & noise
• Ultrafast optics
• Timing & synchronization
• Attosecond laser spectroscopy
• Femtosecond laser spectroscopy
• Laser techniques
• Optical interferometry
• Precision measurements