Ultrafast Optics IV: Selected Contributions to the 4th International Conference on Ultrafast Optics, Vienna, Austria (Springer Series in Optical Sciences, 95)

The papers in this volume cover the major areas of research activity in the field of ultrafast optics at the present time, and they have been selected to provide an overview of the current state of the art. The purview of the field is the methods for the generation, amplification, and characterization of electromagnetic pulses with durations from the pieo-to the attosecond range, as well as the technical issues surrounding the application of these pulses in physics, chemistry, and biology. The contributions were solicited from the participants in the Ultrafast Optics IV Conference, held in Vienna, Austria, in June 2003. The purpose of the conference is similar to that of this book: to provide a forum for the latest advances in ultrafast optical technology. Ultrafast light sources provide a means to observe and manipulate events on the scale of atomic and molecular dynamics. This is possible either through appropriate shaping of the time-dependent electrie field, or through the ap­ plication of fields whose strength is comparable to the binding forces of the electrons in atoms and molecules. Recent advances discussed here include the generation of pulses shorter than two optical cycles, and the ability to measure and to shape them in all degrees of freedom with unprecedented 2 21 2 precision, and to amplify them to the Zettawatt/cm (10 W /cm ) range. Front Matter....Pages I-XIII Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Compact Femtosecond Oscillators....Pages 3-21 Novel 10- to 40-GHz Telecom Pulse Generating Sources with High Average Power....Pages 23-36 Single-Cycle Optical Pulses Produced by Coherent Molecular Oscillations....Pages 37-48 A Robust New Concept for Octave-Spanning Chirped Mirrors with Minimal Dispersion Ripple....Pages 49-54 10-fs, Diode-Pumped Cr:LiCAF Laser....Pages 55-60 Broadband Phase-Coherent Optical Frequency Synthesis With Actively Linked Ti:Sapphire and Cr:Forsterite Femtosecond Lasers....Pages 61-67 Synthesis of Optical Frequencies and Ultrastable Femtosecond Pulse Trains from an Optical Reference Oscillator....Pages 69-74 Generation of 14.8-fs Pulses in a Spatially Dispersive Amplifier....Pages 75-79 A Sub-10-Femtosecond Terawatt-Scale Ti:sapphire Laser System....Pages 81-85 Direct Generation of 12-fs Pulses from a Ti:sapphire Chirped-Pulse Amplification System....Pages 87-90 Generation of 3.8-fs Pulses Through Adaptive Cascaded Hollow Fiber Compression....Pages 91-96 Generation and Characterization of 3.4-fs Optical Pulses with Over-One-Octave Bandwidth....Pages 97-102 Front Matter....Pages 103-103 Acousto-Optic Spectral Filtering of Femtosecond Laser Pulses....Pages 105-118 Adaptive Femtosecond Quantum Control....Pages 119-128 Measuring Spatial Chirp and Pulse-Front Tilt in Ultrashort Pulses Using Single-Shot FROG....Pages 129-134 Measurements of Ultracomplex and Ultraweak Pulses with FROG....Pages 135-141 Few-cycle Pulse Diagnostics Using Plateau Harmonics....Pages 143-148 Front Matter....Pages 149-149 Carrier-Envelope Phase Stabilization of Modelocked Lasers....Pages 151-163 Frontiers of Carrier-Envelope Stabilization Schemes for Femtosecond Oscillators....Pages 165-170 Direct Locking of the Carrier-Envelope Phase of Femtosecond Laser Pulses....Pages 171-177 Front Matter....Pages 149-149 Ultrafast-Laser Stabilization with Application to Pulse Amplification by Use of Passive Optical Cavities....Pages 179-184 Solid-State Carrier-Envelope Phase Detector....Pages 185-189 Selection of Pulses Having a Constant Carrier-Envelope Phase from a Relatively Noisy Mode-Locked Oscillator....Pages 191-196 Carrier Envelope Phase Measurement Using a Non Phase Stable Laser....Pages 197-202 Stabilization and Characterization of the Carrier-Envelope Phase in Intense Few-Cycle Pulses....Pages 203-208 Measurement of the Absolute Phase of few-Cycle Laser Pulses....Pages 209-213 Front Matter....Pages 215-215 Quasi-Phase-Matching of High Harmonic EUV Generation at Very High Ionization Levels....Pages 217-221 Enhancement and Tuning of High-Order Harmonic Generation Using Adaptive Pulse Shaping....Pages 223-228 Multilayer EUV Optics for Applications of Ultrashort High Harmonic Pulses....Pages 229-234 Absolute-Phase Effects of Few-Optical-Cycle Light Pulses in Single-Shot High Order Harmonic Spectra....Pages 235-240 Reproducible Generation and Measurement of Isolated Sub-fs XUV Pulses with Phase-Controlled Few-Cycle Light....Pages 241-246 Controlling High-Harmonic Generation via Molecular Alignment....Pages 247-251 Towards Attosecond Half-Cycle Pulses....Pages 253-257 Temporal Characterization of Attosecond Pulses....Pages 259-270 Techniques for Temporal Characterization of Ultrafast XUV Radiation....Pages 271-283 Characterization of Attosecond Electromagnetic Pulses....Pages 285-291 Characterization of Attosecond Laser Pulses Using Angle-resolved Photoelectron Spectroscopy....Pages 293-300 Front Matter....Pages 301-301 Isolated Attosecond Pulse Generation in the Relativistic λ 3 Regime by Reflection/Deflection/Compression....Pages 303-314 Diode-Pumped Regenerative Amplifier Front End for the Petawatt Laser Chain at LULI....Pages 315-320 The Petawatt Laser Glass Chain at LULI: Technical Issues and First Results....Pages 321-324 Front Matter....Pages 301-301 High Repetition Rate Femtosecond Laser Driven Hard X-Ray Source and its Application for Diffraction Experiments....Pages 325-328 Generation, Amplitude and Phase Characterization of 10 21 W/cm 2 Intensity....Pages 329-332 Ultrafast Hard X-Rays from Electron Accelerators....Pages 333-340 Amplification of Multikilovolt Xe(L) Hollow Atom Transitions with Xe Clusters in Confined Plasma Channels....Pages 341-347 Asymmetric Pulse Shapes in Grating-Based CPA Compressors and Optimal Electron Acceleration in Plasmas....Pages 349-354 Front Matter....Pages 355-355 Progress in Chirped Pulse Optical Parametric Amplifiers....Pages 357-366 Optical Parametric Chirped-Pulse Amplification in Periodically-Poled KTiOPO 4 at 1053 nm....Pages 367-372 Nonlinear Phase-Locking of Parametric Optical Processes: the Sliding Resonance Effect....Pages 373-384 Low Threshold, High Repetition Frequency, Femtosecond Optical Parametric Oscillator Based on Chirped-Pulse Frequency Conversion....Pages 385-391 Generation of sub-20 fs Tunable Visible Pulses from a 100 kHz NOPA For Measuring Ultrafast Heterogeneous Electron Transfer....Pages 393-398 Broadband Sum-Frequency Mixing for Indirect Phase Control of UV Pulses With a Sub-20-Fs TW-Class Ti:Sapphire Laser System....Pages 399-404 New Generation of Photoconductive Few-Cycle Terahertz Emitters....Pages 405-410 Magnetic-Field Induced Enhancement of THz-Radaiation from InAs Irradiated with 0.8 μ m Laser up to 27 T and InSb Irradiated with 1.56 μ m Laser up to 5 T....Pages 411-415 Front Matter....Pages 417-417 Ultrafast Electron Diffraction....Pages 419-435 Some Medical and Biological Applications of Ultrafast Lasers....Pages 437-448 Adaptive Control of Two-Photon Excitation of Green Fluorescent Protein with Shaped Femtosecond Pulses....Pages 449-454 Highly Efficient Second-Harmonic Nanosource by Femtosecond Pulse Irradiation of a Metal Tip....Pages 455-459 Femtosecond Electron Optics: Towards Atomically Resolved Transition States....Pages 461-466 Application of High-Harmonic Radiation for EUV Interferometry and Spectroscopy....Pages 467-474 Time-Resolved Inner Shell Spectroscopy with Sub-fs EUV Pulses....Pages 475-481 Front Matter....Pages 417-417 A Quantum Theory of Time-Resolved Auger Measurement....Pages 483-488 Laser Induced Nuclear Reactions....Pages 489-495 Back Matter....Pages 497-497 This book reflects the most up-to-date results presented at Ultrafast Optics 2003. The volume contains keynote and invited contributions together with carefully selected regular contributions. The book aims at the highest level of presentation to make it useful as a reference for those working in the field. Ultrafast Optics 1999 and 2001 were published as supplements to Applied Physics B - Lasers and Optics.