Abstract

Recent advances in ultrafast optical technology have led to some dramatic improvements in both the generation and detection of pulses of extremely short durations. For example, the colliding pulse mode-locked ring dye laser is now capable of reliably producing optical pulses of only 30 fs.¹ Amplification and nonlinear pulse compression of these pulses have resulted in production of optical pulses of only 8 fs.² These pulses are only four cycles in duration and have a spectral bandwidth that spans almost 1000 Å. In the far-IR region of the electromagnetic spectrum it has recently been demonstrated that pulses of only one cycle in duration can be produced by the rectification of femtosecond optical pulses.³ This technique, which is based on the inverse electrooptic effect, produces a cone of radiation consisting of one cycle having a period approximately equal to the duration of the envelope of the input optical pulse.

© 1986 Optical Society of America