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Frequency domain measurements with Martin-Puplett interferometer is one of a few techniques capable of bunch length measurements at the level of ~ 100 fs. As the bunch length becomes shorter, it is important to know and be able to measure the limitations of the instrument in terms of shortest measurable bunch length. In this paper we describe experiment of using blackbody source with the modified Matrin-Puplett interferometer that is routinely used for bunch length measurements at the JLab FEL, as a way to estimate the shortest, measurable with the device, bunch. The limitation comes from high frequency cut-off of the presently used wire-grid polarizer and is estimated to be 50 fs RMS. The measurements are made with the same Golay cell detector that is used for beam measurements. We demonstrate that, even though the blackbody source is many orders of magnitude less bright than the coherent transition or synchrotron radiation, it can be used for the measurements and gives a very good signal to noise ratio in a combination with lock-in detection. We also compare the measurements made in air and in vacuum to show the very strong effect of the atmospheric absorption.
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