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Now showing 1 - 10 of 24
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    Femtosecond Field‐Driven On‐Chip Unidirectional Electronic Currents in Nonadiabatic Tunneling Regime
    (Weinheim : Wiley VCH, 2021) Shi, Liping; Babushkin, Ihar; Husakou, Anton; Melchert, Oliver; Frank, Bettina; Yi, Juemin; Wetzel, Gustav; Demircan, Ayhan; Lienau, Christoph; Giessen, Harald; Ivanov, Misha; Morgner, Uwe; Kovacev, Milutin
    Recently, asymmetric plasmonic nanojunctions have shown promise as on-chip electronic devices to convert femtosecond optical pulses to current bursts, with a bandwidth of multi-terahertz scale, although yet at low temperatures and pressures. Such nanoscale devices are of great interest for novel ultrafast electronics and opto-electronic applications. Here, the device is operated in air and at room temperature, revealing the mechanisms of photoemission from plasmonic nanojunctions, and the fundamental limitations on the speed of optical-to-electronic conversion. Inter-cycle interference of coherent electronic wavepackets results in a complex energy electron distribution and birth of multiphoton effects. This energy structure, as well as reshaping of the wavepackets during their propagation from one tip to the other, determine the ultrafast dynamics of the current. It is shown that, up to some level of approximation, the electron flight time is well-determined by the mean ponderomotive velocity in the driving field.
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    Stability of quantum linear logic circuits against perturbations
    (Bristol : IOP Publ., 2020) Babushkin, Ihar; Morgner, Uwe; Demircan, Ayhan
    Here we study transformation of waveshapes of photons under the action of the linear logic circuits and other related architectures involving only linear optical networks and measurements. We show that the gates are working well not only in the case when all photons are separable and located in the same mode, but in some more general cases. For instance, the photonic waveshapes are allowed to be slightly different in different channels; in this case, Zeno effect prevents the photons from decoherence after the measurement, and the gate thus remains neutral to the small waveshape perturbations. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd Printed in the UK
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    Onset of Bloch oscillations in the almost-strong-field regime
    ([London] : Nature Publishing Group UK, 2022-12-13) Reislöhner, Jan; Kim, Doyeong; Babushkin, Ihar; Pfeiffer, Adrian N.
    In the field of high-order harmonic generation from solids, the electron motion typically exceeds the edge of the first Brillouin zone. In conventional nonlinear optics, on the other hand, the excursion of band electrons is negligible. Here, we investigate the transition from conventional nonlinear optics to the regime where the crystal electrons begin to explore the first Brillouin zone. It is found that the nonlinear optical response changes abruptly already before intraband currents due to ionization become dominant. This is observed by an interference structure in the third-order harmonic generation of few-cycle pulses in a non-collinear geometry. Although approaching Keldysh parameter γ = 1, this is not a strong-field effect in the original sense, because the iterative series still converges and reproduces the interference structure. The change of the nonlinear interband response is attributed to Bloch motion of the reversible (or transient or virtual) population, similar to the Bloch motion of the irreversible (or real) population which affects the intraband currents that have been observed in high-order harmonic generation.
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    The Effect of Chirp on Pulse Compression at a Group Velocity Horizon
    (New York, NY : IEEE, 2016) Babushkin, Ihar; Amiranashvili, Shalva; Bree, Carsten; Morgner, Uwe; Steinmeyer, Gunter; Demircan, Ayhan
    Group-velocity matched cross-phase modulation between a fundamental soliton and a dispersive wave packet has been previously suggested for optical switching applications similar to an optical transistor. Moreover, the nonlinear interaction in the resulting group-velocity horizon can be exploited for adiabatic compression of the soliton down into the few-cycle regime. Here, we study the delicate phase- and frequency-matching mechanism of soliton/dispersive wave interaction by controlling the input chirp of the dispersive wave. We demonstrate that such a modification of the dispersive wave can significantly alter the soliton dynamics. In particular, we show that it allows a decrease of the fiber length needed for the best compression and, to some extent, control of the trajectory of the soliton. The mechanism of such an influence is related to the modification of the phase-matching condition between the soliton and dispersive wave.
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    All-optical supercontinuum switching
    (London : Springer Nature, 2020) Melchert, Oliver; Brée, Carsten; Tajalli, Ayhan; Pape, Alexander; Arkhipov, Rostislav; Willms, Stephanie; Babushkin, Ihar; Skryabin, Dmitry; Steinmeyer, Günter; Morgner, Uwe; Demircan, Ayhan
    Efficient all-optical switching is a challenging task as photons are bosons and cannot immediately interact with each other. Consequently, one has to resort to nonlinear optical interactions, with the Kerr gate being the classical example. However, the latter requires strong pulses to switch weaker ones. Numerous approaches have been investigated to overcome the resulting lack of fan-out capability of all-optical switches, most of which relied on types of resonant enhancement of light-matter interaction. Here we experimentally demonstrate a novel approach that utilizes switching between different portions of soliton fission induced supercontinua, exploiting an optical event horizon. This concept enables a high switching efficiency and contrast in a dissipation free setting. Our approach enables fan-out, does not require critical biasing, and is at least partially cascadable. Controlling complex soliton dynamics paves the way towards building all-optical logic gates with advanced functionalities. © 2020, The Author(s).
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    Tailoring THz radiation by controlling tunnel photoionization events in gases
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2011) Babushkin, Ihar; Skupin, Stefan; Husakou, Anton; Köhler, Christian; Cabrera-Granado, Eduardo; Bergé, Luc; Herrmann, Joachimj
    Applications ranging from nonlinear terahertz spectroscopy to remote sensing require broadband and intense THz radiation which can be generated by focusing two-color laser pulses into a gas. In this setup, THz radiation originates from the buildup of the electron density in sharp steps of attosecond duration due to tunnel ionization, and subsequent acceleration of free electrons in the laser field. We show that the spectral shape of the THz pulses generated by this mechanism is determined by superposition of contributions from individual ionization events. This provides a straightforward analogy with linear diffraction theory, where the ionization events play the role of slits in a grating. This analogy offers simple explanations for recent experimental observations and opens new avenues for THz pulse shaping based on temporal control of the ionization events. We illustrate this novel technique by tailoring the spectral width and position of the resulting radiation using multi-color pump pulses.
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    3D numerical simulations of THz generation by two-color laser filaments
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2012) Bergé, Luc; Skupin, Stefan; Köhler, Christian; Babushkin, Ihar; Herrmann, Joachim
    Terahertz (THz) radiation produced by the filamentation of two-color pulses over long distances in argon is numerically investigated using a comprehensive model in full spacetime resolved geometry. We show that the dominant physical mechanism for THz generation in the filamentation regime at clamping intensity is based on quasi-dc plasma currents. The calculated THz spectra for different pump pulse energies and pulse durations are in agreement with previously reported experimental observations. For the same pulse parameters, near-infrared pump pulses at 2 m are shown to generate a more than one order of magnitude larger THz yield than pumps centered at 800 nm.
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    Directionality of THz emission from photoinduced gas plasmas
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2011) Köhler, Christian; Cabrera-Granado, Eduardo; Babushkin, Ihar; Bergé, Luc; Herrmann, Joachim; Skupin, Stefan
    Forward and backward THz emission by ionizing two-color laser pulses in gas is investigated by means of a simple semi-analytical model based on Jefimenko's equation and rigorous Maxwell simulations in one and two dimensions. We find the emission in backward direction having a much smaller spectral bandwidth than in forward direction and explain this by interference effects. Forward THz radiation is generated predominantly at the ionization front and is thus almost not affected by the opacity of the plasma, in excellent agreement with results obtained from a unidirectional pulse propagation model.
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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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    Ultrafast spatio-temporal dynamics of terahertz generation by ionizing two-color femtosecond pulses in gases
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2010) Babushkin, Ihar; Kuehn, Wihelm; Köhler, Christian; Skupin, Stefan; Bergé, Luc; Reimann, Klaus; Woerner, Michael; Herrmann, Joachim; Elsaesser, Thomas
    We present a combined theoretical and experimental study of spatio-temporal propagation effects in terahertz (THz) generation in gases using two-color ionizing laser pulses. The observed strong broadening of the THz spectra with increasing gas pressure reveals the prominent role of spatio-temporal reshaping and of a plasma-induced blue-shift of the pump pulses in the generation process. Results obtained from (3+1)-dimensional simulations are in good agreement with experimental findings and clarify the mechanisms responsible for THz emission.