1.Institute of Problems of Chemical Physics,Moscow,Russia;2.Physics Faculty and International Laser Center,M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University,Moscow,Russia
Abstract:
We demonstrate an efficient method of mid-IR femtosecond-laser-pulse self-compression in transparent dielectrics based on a suitable selection of the parameters of the medium and laser radiation. We discuss the principle of selection of the nonlinear medium for ultrashort-pulse self-compression. We show that the proposed combination of the Kerr nonlinearity and negative group-velocity dispersion in a set of transparent dielectric crystals (CaF2, BaF2, YAG, etc.) provides a compression of the incident laser pulse to a 1–2 cycle pulse width.