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Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Symmetry breaking and strong persistent plasma currents via resonant destabilization of atoms
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2017) Brée, Carsten; Hofmann, Michael; Babushkin, Ihar; Demircan, Ayhan; Morgner, Uwe; Kosareva, Olga G.; Savelev, Andrei B.; Husakou, Anton; Ivanov, Misha
    The ionization rate of an atom in a strong optical field can be resonantly enhanced by the presence of long-living atomic levels (so called Freeman resonances). This process is most prominent in the multiphoton ionization regime meaning that ionization event takes many optical cycles. Nevertheless, here we show that these resonances can lead to fast subcycle-scale plasma buildup at the resonant values of the intensity in the pump pulse. The fast buildup can break the cycletocycle symmetry of the ionization process, resulting in generation of persistent macroscopic plasma currents which remain after the end of the pulse. This, in turn, gives rise to a broadband radiation of unusual spectral structure forming a comb from terahertz (THz) to visible. This radiation contains fingerprints of the attosecond electronic dynamics in Rydberg states during ionization.
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    Adjustable pulse compression scheme for generation of few-cycle pulses in the mid-infrared
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2014) Demircan, Ayhan; Amiranashvili, Shalva; Brée, Carsten; Morgner, Uwe; Steinmeyer, Günter
    An novel adjustable adiabatic soliton compression scheme is presented, enabling a coherent pulse source with pedestal-free few-cycle pulses in the infrared or mid-infrared regime. This scheme relies on interaction of a dispersive wave and a soliton copropagating at nearly identical group velocities in a fiber with enhanced infrared transmission. The compression is achieved directly in one stage, without necessity of an external compensation scheme. Numerical simulations are employed to demonstrate this scheme for silica and fluoride fibers, indicating ultimate limitations as well as the possibility of compression down to the single-cycle regime. Such output pulses appear ideally suited as seed sources for parametric amplification schemes in the mid-infrared.
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    Non-instantaneous polarization dynamics in dielectric media
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2014) Hofmann, Michael; Hyyti, Janne; Birkholz, Simon; Bock, Martin; Das, Susanta K.; Grunwald, Rüdiger; Hoffmann, Mathias; Nagy, Tamas; Demircan, Ayhan; Jupé, Marco; Ristau, Detlev; Morgner, Uwe; Brée, Carsten; Woerner, Michael; Elsaesser, Thomas; Steinmeyer, Günter
    Third-order optical nonlinearities play a vital role for generation1,2 and characterization 3-5 of some of the shortest optical pulses to date, for optical switching applications6,7, and for spectroscopy8,9. In many cases, nonlinear optical effects are used far off resonance, and then an instantaneous temporal response is expected. Here, we show for the first time resonant frequency-resolved optical gating measurements1012 that indicate substantial nonlinear polarization relaxation times up to 6.5 fs in dielectric media, i.e., significantly beyond the shortest pulses directly available from commercial lasers. These effects are among the fastest effects observed in ultrafast spectroscopy. Numerical solutions of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation13,14 are in excellent agreement with experimental observations. The simulations indicate that pulse generation and characterization in the ultraviolet may be severely affected by this previously unreported effect. Moreover, our approach opens an avenue for application of frequency-resolved optical gating as a highly selective spectroscopic probe in high-field physics.