Kerr-Assisted Self-Compression of Mid-IR Femtosecond Laser Pulse in Dielectrics: Nonlinear-Medium Choice

Аннотация

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.