An optical compression technique which is particularly suitable for ultrashort pulses of high energy is presented. Spectral broadening is achieved by pulse propagation along a hollow-core fused silica waveguide filled with noble gases at high pressure. Pulse compression is then obtained in a prisms dispersive delay line. Experiments performed with pulses of 140 fs duration and 660 μJ energy from a Ti:sapphire laser demonstrate the generation of compressed pulses of 10 fs duration and 240 μJ energy.

High-energy 20-fs pulses generated by a Ti:sapphire laser system were spectrally broadened to more than 250 nm by self-phase modulation in a hollow fiber filled with noble gases and subsequently compressed in a broadband high-throughput dispersive system. Pulses as short as 4.5 fs with energy up to 20-microJ were obtained with krypton, while pulses as short as 5 fs with energy up to 70 microJ were obtained with argon. These pulses are, to our knowledge, the shortest generated to date at multigigawatt peak powers.

), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. If there is cover art, insert cover illustration line. Give the name of the cover designer if requested by publishing. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights.Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) To my wife Rosanna and to my sons Cesare and Giuseppe PrefaceThis book is motivated by the very favorable reception given to the previous editions as well as by the considerable range of new developments in the laser field since the publication of the third edition in 1989. These new developments include, among others, Quantum-Well and Multiple-Quantum Well lasers, diode-pumped solid-state lasers, new concepts for both stable and unstable resonators, femtosecond lasers, ultra-high-brightness lasers etc. The basic aim of the book has remained the same, namely to provide a broad and unified description of laser behavior at the simplest level which is compatible with a correct physical understanding. The book is therefore intended as a text-book for a senior-level or first-year graduate course and/or as a reference book.This edition corrects several errors introduced in the previous edition. The most relevant additions or changes to since the third edition can be summarized as follows: The book also contains numerous, thoroughly developed, examples, as well as many tables and appendixes. The examples either refer to real situations, as found in the literature or encountered through my own laboratory experience, or describe a significative advance in a particular topic. The tables provide data on optical, spectroscopic and nonlinear-optical properties of laser materials, the data being useful for developing a more quantitative context as well as for solving the problems. The appendixes are introduced to consider some specific topics in more mathematical detail. A great deal of effort has also been devoted to the logical organization of the book so as to make its content more accessible.The basic philosophy of the book is to resort, wherever appropriate, to an intuitive picture rather than to a detailed mathematical description of the phenomena under consideration. Simple mathematical descriptions, when useful for a better understanding of the physical picture, are included in the text while the discussion of more elaborate analytical models is deferred to the appendixes. The basic organization starts from the observation that a laser can be considered to consists of three elements, namely the active medium, the resonator, and the pumping system. Accordingly, after an introductory chapter, Chapters...

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We demonstrate generation of 3.8-fs pulses with energies of up to 15 microJ from a supercontinuum produced in two cascaded hollow fibers. Ultrabroadband dispersion compensation was achieved through a closed-loop combination of a spatial light modulator for adaptive pulse compression and spectral-phase interferometry for direct electric-field reconstruction (SPIDER) measurements as feedback signal.