Ultrashort pulse non-linear optical absorption in transparent media

Absorption of ultrashort optical pulses in water.

We investigate the linear propagation of 800 and 1530 nm ultrashort optical pulses in water. For all pulse repetition rates studied, we observe pure exponential decay down to a transmission of 2.5 x 10(-5). We further demonstrate that previous observations of nonmonoexponential decay and pulse splitup in broadband pulses are consistent with Beer's law in the purely linear regime.

Optical precursors in transparent media

Optical shock and blow-up of ultrashort pulses in transparent media

P. Whalen,1 J. V. Moloney,2,3,4 A. C. Newell,3 K. Newell,3 and M. Kolesik2,4,5 1Program in Applied Mathematics, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721-0089, USA 2Arizona Center for Mathematical Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721-0089, USA 3Department of Mathematics, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721-0089, USA 4College of Optical Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ ...

Modeling of Nonlinear Ultrashort Optical Pulse Propagation

I present a numerical package, written in MATLAB, which provides a simplified scripting interface for simulating a host of ultrashort pulse propagation phenomena. With the proliferation of ultrashort laser technologies, the demand for efficient and accurate simulations has grown significantly. Here I introduce a linear-operator-based formalism for nonlinear pulse propagation beyond the slowly-v...

Ultrashort filaments of light in weakly-ionized, optically-transparent media

Modern laser sources nowadays deliver ultrashort light pulses reaching few cycles in duration, high energies beyond the Joule level and peak powers exceeding several terawatt (TW). When such pulses propagate through optically-transparent media, they first self-focus in space and grow in intensity, until they generate a tenuous plasma by photo-ionization. For free electron densities and beam int...