Degenerate four-wave mixing spectroscopy excited by ultrashort laser pulses

A new method is described for spectroscopic diagnostics of combustion and explosion products, which makes it possible to study processes occurring at short times in hot and dense molecular gases. Pis’ma Zh. Tekh. Fiz. 23, 16–19 (March 26, 1997)     

Generation of high-intensity second harmonics by femtosecond pulses

It is demonstrated that high-intensity second harmonic generation by femtosecond pulses is possible under conditions of the wave self-action during propagation in an optical fiber.     

Fine-pitched microgratings encoded by interference of UV femtosecond laser pulses

Fine-pitched microgratings are encoded on fused silica surfaces by a two-beam laser interference technique employing UV femtosecond pulses from the third harmonics of a Ti:sapphire laser. A pump and prove method utilizing a laser-induced optical Kerr effect or transient optical absorption change has been developed to achieve the time coincidence of the two pulses. Use of the UV pulses makes it possible to narrow the grating pitches to an opening as small as 290 nm, and the groove width of the gratings is of nanoscale size. The present technique provides a novel opportunity for the fabrication of periodic nanoscale structures in various materials.     

Influence of spectral broadening on femtosecond wavelength conversion based on four-wave mixing in silicon waveguides

Femtosecond wavelength conversion in the telecommunication bands via four-wave mixing in a 1.5 mm long silicon rib waveguide is theoretically investigated. Compared with picosecond pulses, the spectra are greatly broadened for the femtosecond pulses due to self-phase modulation and cross-phase modulation in the four-wave mixing process, and it is difficult to achieve a wavelength converter when the pump and signal pulse widths are close to or less than 100 fs in the telecommunication bands because of the spectral overlap. The influence of the spectral broadening on the conversion efficiency is also investigated. The conversion bandwidth of 220 nm and peak conversion efficiency of -8 dB are demonstrated by using 500 fs pulses with higher efficiency than the picosecond pulse-pumped efficiency when the repetition rate is 100 GHz.     

Generation of high-repetition-rate femtosecond pulses from 8 to 18 microm

We generated subpicosecond pulses from 8 to 18 mum by difference-frequency mixing in a 1-mm-thick AgGaSe(2) crystal, the 130- and 180-fs output pulses (1.45 < lambda < 1.85 mum) from an 84-MHz-repetition-rate optical parametric oscillator. Numerical simulations show that intrapulse and interpulse group velocity dispersion determine minimum pulse duration above and below 15 mum, respectively. By cross correlation (upconversion) of 10.5-mum pulses with 90-fs, 810-nm pulses in AgGaS(2), the pulse length was measured to be 310 fs in good agreement with simulations.     

Generation of femtosecond current pulses using the inverse magneto-optical Faraday effect

A new method of generating ultrashort current pulses is proposed that is based on the optical pumping of a mesoscopic structure comprising a metal ring with a core made of a material possessing giant magneto-optical susceptibility. The main dynamic characteristics of the proposed device are calculated.     

Generation of single short tunable UV pulses using a simple short-cavity dye laser

Generation of single, short, tunable UV pulses using a short-cavity dye laser (SCDL) with a novel simple cavity structure is described. A single 80-ps pulse has been obtained at the 616-nm wavelength from a rhodamine 640 dye laser pumped with a 2-ns N2 laser pulse. By amplifying and subsequent frequency-doubling, a 90-ps 308-nm pulse was generated, which can be used as a short-duration XeCl excimer laser source. The temporal characteristics coupled rate equations.     

Characteristics of four-wave mixing in a Bose-condensed atomic gas

An analysis is made of four-wave mixing of laser radiation interacting with an ultracold degenerate ensemble of boson atoms trapped in a magnetic trap. It is shown that the existence of long-range order in this type of atomic system leads to a new mechanism for the generation of the reversed wave whose experimental manifestation should differ from four-wave mixing in a nondegenerate gas. A similar nonlinear optical effect may be used for diagnostics of an ultracold gas at temperatures not much lower than the phase transition temperature. Pis’ma Zh. Tekh. Fiz. 25, 61–64 (November 26, 1999)     

Laser desorption and imaging of proteins from ice via UV femtosecond laser pulses

We have employed 200-fs, 400-nm laser pulses to desorb intact protein molecular ions directly from a frozen aqueous matrix. The resulting spectra obtained using a variety of proteins varying in molecular weight from 1060 (bradykinin) to 5778 Da (insulin) are compatible with those obtained with traditional matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization experiments. High-quality spectra could be generated using a fluence of 4.0-9.0 J/cm2 to desorb proteins from an aqueous solution frozen onto metal substrates with a sensitivity in the femtomole range. Although the mechanism behind this effect is still not clear, we speculate that it involves explosive boiling of the ice layer due to rapid heating of the substrate. Imaging experiments conducted on the ice layer suggest that the yield of protein is approximately independent of the film thickness and is very reproducible from shot to shot. The results are particularly significant since they open the possibility of examining a range of biomaterials directly from the in vivo aqueous environment.     

Generation of carrier-envelope phase-controlled isolated attosecond pulses using chirped femtosecond excitation lasers

ABSTRACT

We present an efficient approach for producing a carrier-envelope phase controlled isolated attosecond pulse by an optimized intense driving laser pulse. High-order harmonics are produced by numerically solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation for the one-dimensional hydrogen atom in an ultrashort laser pulse. We define an efficient cost function to optimize the laser pulse by a genetic algorithm scheme. Our approach produces single attosecond pulses with desired properties, including the carrier-envelope phase, central frequency, and duration. Also, we analyze the time–frequency profiles of the attosecond emissions to gain a deeper insight into the underlying physical mechanism.     

Optical negative refraction by four-wave mixing in thin metallic nanostructures

The law of refraction first derived by Snellius and later introduced as the Huygens-Fermat principle, states that the incidence and refracted angles of a light wave at the interface of two different materials are related to the ratio of the refractive indices in each medium. Whereas all natural materials have a positive refractive index and therefore exhibit refraction in the positive direction, artificially engineered negative index metamaterials have been shown capable of bending light waves negatively. Such a negative refractive index is the key to achieving a perfect lens that is capable of imaging well below the diffraction limit. However, negative index metamaterials are typically lossy, narrow band, and require complicated fabrication processes. Recently, an alternative approach to obtain negative refraction from a very thin nonlinear film has been proposed and experimentally demonstrated in the microwave region. However, such approaches use phase conjugation, which makes optical implementations difficult. Here, we report a simple but different scheme to demonstrate experimentally nonlinear negative refraction at optical frequencies using four-wave mixing in nanostructured metal films. The refractive index can be designed at will by simply tuning the wavelengths of the interacting waves, which could have potential impact on many important applications, such as superlens imaging.     

Interferometric fidelity of self-pumped phase conjugation in BaTiO3 and a four-wave mixing set-up with Bi12SiO20 using nanosecond pulses

Abstract

The fidelity of a self-pumped phase conjugating mirror (SPPCM) in the so-called cat configuration is studied with an interferometric method for a cobalt-doped barium titanate crystal (BaTiO₃:Co) under pulse illumination (8 ns, 532 nm). With this SPPCM a phase conjugating four-wave mixing set-up using the sillenite-type crystal Bi₁₂SiO₂₀ (BSO) was realized. It is shown that the fidelity of both phase conjugating processes under pulse illumination nearly reaches the fidelity of continuous-wave experiments.     

Generation of self-pumped phase conjugation from the -c face of BaTiO3 with femtosecond pulses

We demonstrate a new configuration of self-pumped phase conjugation in BaTiO(3) with 450-nm femtosecond pulses. The pump beam enters the -c face of the crystal at an acute angle with respect to the +c axis. This geometry is different from all known geometries of self-pumped phase conjugations in BaTiO(3). Phase-conjugate reflectivity of 1.7% and a rise time of ~24 s are obtained at an average pump power of 10 mW. The ability of the phase conjugator to serve phase distortions correctly is demonstrated. We propose that the femtosecond phase conjugator operate with the hologram mechanism sharing as the double phase conjugator. The self-pumped phase-conjugate pulses are analyzed by femtosecond electric-field cross correlation.     

Splitting of femtosecond laser pulses by using a Dammann grating and compensation gratings

When a Dammann grating is used to split a beam of femtosecond laser pulses into multiple equal-intensity beams, chromatic dispersion will occur in beams of each order of diffraction and with different scale of angular dispersion because the incident ultrashort pulse contains a broad range of spectral bandwidths. We propose a novel method in which the angular dispersion can be compensated by positioning an m-time-density grating to collimate the mth-order beam that has been split, producing an array of beams that are free of angular dispersion. The increased width of the compensated output pulses and the spectral walk-off effect are discussed. We have verified this approach theoretically and validated it through experiments. It should be highly interesting in practical applications of splitting femtosecond laser pulses for pulse-width measurement, pump-probe measurement, and micromachining at multiple points.     

Switching enhancement and suppression of four-wave mixing via a dressing field

The switch between the enhancement and suppression of the four-wave mixing (FWM) process in an electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) window via quantum interference has been demonstrated experimentally. The enhancement and suppression of the FWM signal, as well as the EIT window, switch with a change in the probe detuning. Also, by controlling the powers of the dressing and probe fields, the enhancement and suppression of the FWM signal can be switched and an optimized enhancement can be obtained. Such a switch of the enhancement and suppression of the FWM signal intensity can find potential applications in optical switches, optical communication and quantum information processes.     

Nonstationary absorption wave in a solid transparent dielectric

Numerical methods are used to examine the process of formation and development of a laser radiation absorption wave in a solid medium. Radiation propagation within the material is described in the geometric optics approximation.Translated from Inzhenerno-Fizicheskii Zhurnal, Vol. 42, No. 4, pp. 633–639, April, 1982.     

Intensity dependence suppression and enhancement of four-wave mixing in a micrometric thin vapour

We theoretically investigate dressed-four-wave mixing (dressed-FWM) spectroscopy of rubidium atoms in a micrometric thin vapour. It is found that Dike-narrowing type Autler–Townes (AT) spectroscopy with high resolution can be achieved in a reverse Y-type four-level atomic system due to the phase-conjugated configuration of laser beams and the transient effects of atom–wall collision in the thin vapour. We also show that controllable suppression and enhancement of the dressed-FWM signal due to the evolution of atomic coherence can be obtained by selecting different coupling field intensities at the proper detuning of the probe and the coupling fields. This control of FWM processes can be interpreted by dressed state analysis and probably used in the design of optical switch and the enhancement of FWM processes for frequency conversion.