Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
1535711 Optics Communications 2013 5 Pages PDF
Abstract

We identify the physical scenarios of nonlinear spatiotemporal dynamics of extreme-power laser fields enabling compression of a broad-beam ultrafast multipetawatt laser output to subexawatt few-cycle light pulses focusable to pulse intensities up to 1025 W/cm2. We show that, with a careful control over the key limiting physical effects, which include dispersion, pulse self-steepening, small-scale self-focusing, and ionization effects, enhanced self-phase modulation of multipetawatt laser waveforms in a solid medium can provide spectral bandwidths compressible to few-cycle pulse widths with output beam profiles focusable to ultrarelativistic intensities.

Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering Materials Science Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
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