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arXiv · 0910.0944

Compression of ultrashort UV pulses in a self-defocusing gas

L. Berge·C. Koehler·S. Skupin
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Abstract

Compression of UV femtosecond laser pulses focused into a gas cell filled with xenon is reported numerically. With a large negative Kerr index and normal dispersion, xenon promotes temporal modulational instability (MI) which can be monitored to shorten ~ 100 fs pulses to robust, singly-peaked waveforms exhibiting a fourfold compression factor. Combining standard MI theory with a variational approach allows us to predict the beam parameters suitable for efficient compression. At powers < 30 MW, nonlinear dispersion is shown to shift the pulse temporal profile to the rear zone.

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L. Berge, C. Koehler, S. Skupin. 2009-10-06. Compression of ultrashort UV pulses in a self-defocusing gas. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.81.011805

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