Abstract

In this talk, we discuss recently developed by us methods of unipolar half-cycle pulse generation having attosecond duration in optical range and femtosecond duration in terahertz frequency ranges. Such pulses contain a half period of electric field oscillation and weak decaying tail of opposite polarity (quasi unipolar pulse) or without tail (unipolar one). They can have nonzero electric field area. The common way for effective excitation and control of atomic populations is to excite them with resonant multi-cycle pulses. We demonstrate that half-cycle and unipolar pulses can be also used for effective excitation, charge acceleration and selective excitation of atomic level populations in spite of non-resonant interaction and broad spectrum.

© 2020 The Author(s)