Expand this Topic clickable element to expand a topic
Skip to content
Optica Publishing Group

Sub-1.5-cycle pulses from a single filament

Open Access Open Access

Abstract

The temporal dynamics of ultrashort laser pulses undergoing filamentary propagation are investigated with a real-time stereographic above-threshold ionization (ATI) phasemeter. The experimental setup is capable of measuring the pulse duration as well as the carrier-envelope phase distribution of pulses originating from a femtosecond filament, which is either truncated in length or fully propagated. Truncation, by means of a semi-infinite gas cell, allows to elucidate the nonlinear evolution and temporal dynamics of ultrashort laser pulses as a function of the propagation length. We observe the formation of few-cycle pulses as well as temporal pulse splitting dynamics during the propagation of the pulse inside the filament. For the first time, we demonstrate the compression of 35 fs pulses down to a duration of sub-4 fs in a single femtosecond filament. This corresponds to sub-1.5 cycles of the electric field.

© 2012 Optical Society of America

Full Article  |  PDF Article
More Like This
Direct observation of pulse dynamics and self-compression along a femtosecond filament

Martin Kretschmar, Carsten Brée, Tamas Nagy, Ayhan Demircan, Heiko G. Kurz, Uwe Morgner, and Milutin Kovačev
Opt. Express 22(19) 22905-22916 (2014)

Spatio-temporal characterization of few-cycle pulses obtained by filamentation

A. Zaïr, A. Guandalini, F. Schapper, M. Holler, J. Biegert, L. Gallmann, A. Couairon, M. Franco, A. Mysyrowicz, and U. Keller
Opt. Express 15(9) 5394-5405 (2007)

Generation of sub-half-cycle 10 µm pulses through filamentation at kilohertz repetition rates

Wei-Hong Huang, Yue Zhao, Shota Kusama, Fumitoshi Kumaki, Chih-Wei Luo, and Takao Fuji
Opt. Express 28(24) 36527-36543 (2020)

Cited By

Optica participates in Crossref's Cited-By Linking service. Citing articles from Optica Publishing Group journals and other participating publishers are listed here.

Alert me when this article is cited.


Figures (6)

Fig. 1
Fig. 1 Experimental setup. Pulses from a chirped pulse amplifier are focused into a semi-infinite gas cell filled with argon. The filament, generated in argon, is either truncated by a laser-drilled pinhole with further propagation in vacuum or fully propagated. The generated white-light is coupled out and analyzed in a stereo-ATI-phasemeter. (see text for further details)
Fig. 2
Fig. 2 Pulses from a truncated filament of different propagation lengths in 780 mbar argon. The propagation length denotes the distance between the curved mirror CM1 and the pinhole P1. The black boxes illustrate the Fourier-limited pulse duration evaluated from spectral measurements, the red circles depict the measured pulse duration. The dashed lines denote a moving average of the measured values over an intervall of 4 cm. The blue triangles are measurements of a second sub-pulse appearing at another post-compression setting i.e another fused silica wedge setting.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3 The red dots show distinct short sub-pulses contained after filamentation in 780 mbar of argon at a position of the filament of 254.5 cm. The different pulses are distinguished by their different chirp-characteristics. The black lines display the calculated effects of additional dispersion upon the various sub-pulses. This excludes the possible assumption of a measurement of the same stretched pulse at different dispersion settings.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4 Fully propagated filament in 810 mbar argon. (a) Spectrum after the fully propagated filament. (b) Temporal pulse envelope, calculated from the shown spectrum. The calculated Fourier-limited pulse duration at FWHM is 4.18 fs. (c) Parametric asymmetry plot (PAP) of sub-1.5-cycle pulses from the fully propagated filament. The radius is 0.865 and corresponds to a pulse duration of 3.8 fs.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5 Pulse duration after the undisturbed filament in dependence of the relative dispersion of the entrance pulses. The dashed curve shows a quadratic fit to the measurement.
Fig. 6
Fig. 6 Investigation of the undisturbed filament versus argon pressure. (a) Normalized spectra after filamentation versus argon pressure in the SIGC. (b) Fourier-limited pulse duration (boxes) from the spectra and measured pulse duration (circles) determined by stereo-ATI measurements versus pressure.

Equations (1)

Equations on this page are rendered with MathJax. Learn more.

τ [ fs ] = 1.6063 + 9.7371 ln ( 1 r )
Select as filters


Select Topics Cancel
© Copyright 2024 | Optica Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved