Even with moderate pulse energies and average powers, ultrashort pulse lasers achieve very high peak powers, whose effect on matter is fundamentally different from that of other light sources. The high electric field strength does not only cause an increase of optically nonlinear effects such as second harmonic generation, but it is also responsible for the “cold“ ablation, which leads to colder plasmas. An investigation of these two circumstances in terms of a simplification of the pulse duration measurement and an improvement of the molecular formation in cooling plasmas is the topic of this work. In this context, it is shown that when selecting suitable process parameters, especially when purposefully defocusing the medium, the use of ultrashort pulse lasers improves the spectroscopy of several emitting molecules such as aluminum oxide. Therefore, their detection is possible even without the time-resolving spectrometers required in literature. In addition, ultrashort pulses enable spatially resolved crystallization of zinc oxide on zinc surfaces prepared by basic means. The resulting wurtzites usually align their c-axis approximately perpendicular to the underlying surface and can be used to generate scattered second harmonics. Fiber-based femtosecond lasers with pulse energies in the microjoule range, pulse durations of a few 100fs and very low maintenance requirements have proven to be a powerful instrument for these purposes. For measuring the pulse duration, the high pulse energy also enables the usage of frequency doublers with much lower conversion eciencies. Despite nonuniform crystal axes, the scattering second harmonic generating aluminum nitride has proven to be particularly suitable for optical autocorrelation. Compared to the commonly used monocrystalline beta-barium borate, the sintered aluminum nitride ceramic plates facilitate the adjustment, simplify the material handling and reduce the expenses by two to three orders of magnitude. The method developed in this work is therefore also suitable for confirmatory measurements of the pulse duration during the production process of such systems – especially when the occurring pulse energies are high or rather too high for beta-barium borate.