Abstract

Laser sources emitting single-cycle optical pulses with spectra spanning more than one octave of bandwidth are highly desirable for many novel applications and fundamental studies. Such pulses would advance many areas of femtosecond optics, such as phase sensitive nonlinear optics, frequency metrology and high-resolution optical coherence tomography to mention only a few. Over the last years sub-two cycle Ti:sapphire lasers [1], three-cycle Cr:forsterite lasers [2] and four-cycle Cr⁴⁺:YAG lasers [3] have been developed. Key to this success was the development of dispersion compensating laser optics such as chirped and double-chirped mirrors [4,5]. Figure 1 shows the spectra of the most broadband laser systems realized so far.

© 2002 Optical Society of America