Abstract

The generation of ultrashort vacuum UV (VUV) pulses by nondegenerate cascaded four-wave mixing of femtosecond pulses in a thin slide of a large band-gap transparent solid is numerically demonstrated. Using a novel noncollinear multiple-beam configuration, cascaded four-wave mixing of amplified $30\mathrm{fs}$ Ti:sapphire laser pulses at $800\mathrm{nm}$, and their second harmonic in lithium fluoride results in the generation of VUV radiation down to $134\mathrm{nm}$ with energies in the $\mathrm{\mu J}$ range and durations comparable to those of the pump pulses. The proposed geometry is advantageous in large dispersion scenarios, namely for generating radiation close to absorption bands. Hence these results set this technique as a promising way to efficiently generate ultrashort VUV radiation in solids for several applications in science and technology.

© 2011 Optical Society of America

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