Subcycle Controlled Charge-Directed Reactivity with Few-Cycle Midinfrared Pulses

Subcycle controlled charge-directed reactivity with few-cycle midinfrared pulses.

The steering of electron motion in molecules is accessible with waveform-controlled few-cycle laser light and may control the outcome of light-induced chemical reactions. An optical cycle of light, however, is much shorter than the duration of the fastest dissociation reactions, severely limiting the degree of control that can be achieved. To overcome this limitation, we extended the control me...

Controlling H- detachment with few-cycle pulses

Diffraction-induced transformation of near-cycle and subcycle pulses

An analytical approach to the theory of diffraction transformation of pulses with superbroad spectra and arbitrary time dependence, in particular half-cycle (unipolar), single-cycle, and multicycle pulses, was developed. Closed-form solutions were found for on-axis propagation of half-cycle pulses with initially Gaussian spatial profiles that have either cosh21-like or Gaussian time dependence,...

High harmonic generation with long-wavelength few-cycle laser pulses

We report the extension of hollow-core fibre pulse compression to longer wavelengths. High-energy multi-cycle infrared pulses are generated via optical parametric amplification and subsequently broadened in the fibre. 2.5-cycle pulses at the Signal wavelength (1.4 μm) and 1.6-cycle pulses at the Idler wavelength (1.8 μm) in the sub-millijoule regime have been generated. New compression schemes ...

Surface plasmon enhanced electron acceleration with few-cycle laser pulses

Surface plasmon enhanced electron acceleration is a recently discovered efficient particle acceleration phenomenon in the nanoscale-confined field of surface electromagnetic waves. For the generation and spatial/spectral control of keV-energy electrons generated, this way few-cycle laser pulses can be utilized particularly well. We present numerical results based on a simple model of this pheno...