2013, Grunwald, R., Das, S.K., Debroy, A., McGlynn, E., Messaoudi, H.

Nonlinear excitation mechanisms of plasmons and their influence on femtosecond-laser induced sub-wavelength ripple generation on dielectric and semiconducting transparent materials are discussed. The agreement of theoretical and experimental data indicates the relevance of the model.

2002, Nerreter, S., Seewald, G., Fischer, A., Neumann, U., Tischer, M., Grunwald, R.

[no abstract available]

2014, Grunwald, R., Elsaesser, T., Bock, M.

Light carrying an orbital angular momentum (OAM) displays an optical phase front rotating in space and time and a vanishing intensity, a so-called vortex, in the center. Beyond continuous-wave vortex beams, optical pulses with a finite OAM are important for many areas of science and technology, ranging from the selective manipulation and excitation of matter to telecommunications. Generation of vortex pulses with a duration of few optical cycles requires new methods for characterising their coherence properties in space and time. Here we report a novel approach for flexibly shaping and characterising few-cycle vortex pulses of tunable topological charge with two sequentially arranged spatial light modulators. The reconfigurable optical arrangement combines interferometry, wavefront sensing, time-of-flight and nonlinear correlation techniques in a very compact setup, providing complete spatiooral coherence maps at minimum pulse distortions. Sub-7â €...fs pulses carrying different optical angular momenta are generated in single and multichannel geometries and characterised in comparison to zero-order Laguerre-Gaussian beams. To the best of our knowledge, this represents the shortest pulse durations reported for direct vortex shaping and detection with spatial light modulators. This access to space-time coupling effects with sub-femtosecond time resolution opens new prospects for tailored twisted light transients of extremely short duration.