Inhomogeneity and low efficiency are two important factors that hinder the wide application of laser-induced periodic surface structures. Two-beam interference is commonly used to fabricate gratings with interference periods. This study reports regular and uniform periodic ripples fabricated efficiently by the interference of two femtosecond laser beams via a cylindrical lens. The interference period is adjusted to be an integer multiple of the wavelength of a surface plasmon polariton. Regular and uniform subwavelength nanogratings (RUSNGs) on a silicon wafer of a diameter of 100 mm are fabricated with a scanning velocity of 6–9 mm/s. Bright and pure colors (including purple, blue, and red) are demonstrated on different patterns covered with RUSNGs.

Terahertz (THz) waves could be generated through exciting a gravity-guided, free-flowing water wedge by a dual-color pulse. It is not required to rotate the optimal angle considering the water film as an ionization medium. It is demonstrated to be more effective to generate stronger THz radiation when the ionization position is on the front surface of the air water interface of the water wedge by moving its position. The effect of pulse energy on THz generation is also investigated, and it is observed that with the increase of pulse energy the THz electric field shows a quadratic rising trend. These observations are consistent with air plasma induced THz emission.

We demonstrate a harmonically pumped femtosecond optical parametric oscillator (OPO) laser using a frequency-doubled mode-locked Yb:KGW laser at a repetition rate of 75.5 MHz as the pump laser. Based on a bismuth borate nonlinear crystal, repetition rates up to 1.13 GHz are realized, which is 15 times that of the pump laser. The signal wavelength is tunable from 700 nm to 887 nm. The maximum power of the signal is 207 mW at the central wavelength of 750 nm and the shortest pulse duration is 117 fs at 780 nm. The beam quality (M2 factor) in the horizontal and vertical directions of the output beam are 1.077 and 1.141, respectively.

To make further understanding of terahertz (THz) wave generation from liquid water, we study THz wave emission from water lines of different diameters. The water line with a smaller diameter generates a stronger THz electric field for the diameters from 0.2 mm to 0.5 mm. The THz electric field strength and polarity change with the relative position between the incident laser and water line. Moreover, the THz energy has an optimal radiation angle of about 60°. A two-dimensional dipole array model is introduced to illustrate the phenomenon. Our observations contribute to optimizing the scheme of the liquid THz source.

We experimentally investigated the forward 353.8 nm radiation from plasma filaments in pure nitrogen gas pumped by intense circularly polarized 800 nm femtosecond laser pulses. This emission line corresponds to the B2Σu+(v′=4)-X2Σg+(v=3) transition of nitrogen ions. In the presence of an external seeding pulse, the 353.8 nm signal was amplified by 3 orders of magnitude. Thanks to the much enhanced intensity, we performed time-resolved measurement of the amplified 353.8 nm emission based on the sum-frequency generation technique. It was revealed that the built-up time and duration of these emissions are both inversely proportional to the gas pressure, while the radiation peak power grows up nearly quadratically with pressure, indicating that the 353.8 nm radiation is of the nature of superradiance.

High-order harmonic generation originated from zigzag graphene nanoribbons (ZGNRs) induced by intense laser pulses is investigated theoretically. During the interaction between the intense mid-infrared laser and the ZGNR, we find that localized edge states mainly contribute to the generation of the low-order harmonics, while cutoff harmonics result from the other confined states. Our result shows that the edge-state effect of ZGNR with narrow width can enhance the conversion efficiency of low-order harmonics, rather than the higher-order harmonics extended to the cutoff region.

We demonstrate an all-fiber Yb:fiber frequency comb with a nonlinear-amplifying-loop-mirror-based Yb:fiber laser oscillator. The fiber-spliced hollow-core photonic bandgap fiber was used as dispersion compensator, which was also directly spliced to a piece of tapered photonic crystal fiber for an octave-spanning spectrum. The spectrum of the compressed 107 fs laser pulses was broadened, covering 600 nm to 1300 nm in a high-nonlinearity tapered fiber for f to 2f beating. The signal-to-noise ratio of offset frequency was measured to be 22 dB.

We show the intensity control of filamentation in fused silica by temporally shaping the femtosecond laser pulse. The arbitrary control of filamentation intensity has been obtained by the feedback control based on the genetic algorithm, and the peak intensity of filament has changed from about 670 to around 2100 (charge-coupled device counts). This modulation is in qualitative agreement with the simulation results. It is shown that the control of the intensity is realized by modulating the peak power of the shaped pulse.

Based on Kogelnik’s coupled-wave theory, it is found that when a femtosecond pulse is incident on a transmitted volume holographic grating, two transverse standing waves along the grating vector direction will be generated inside the volume holographic grating (VHG). Due to field localization of two standing waves, they have two different velocities along the propagation depth. On the output plane of the VHG, femtosecond dual pulses are generated in both the diffracted and transmitted directions. Results show that the pulse interval is determined by the refractive index modulation and thickness of the grating, while the waveform of the dual pulses is independent of the grating parameters.

The effect of material surface morphology on the periodic subwavelength of nano-structures induced by a femtosecond (fs) laser was investigated systematically from the initial surface roughness, the different scratches, the pre-formed ripples, and the “layer-carving” technology experiments. The results of the comparative experiments indicate that the initial surface conditions of the target surface have no obvious effects on the spatial structured periods (SSPs) and the ripple orientation of the periodic nano-structures induced by a fs laser, which agreed well with the foretold present surface two-plasmon resonance (STPR) model. Furthermore, different shapes of nano-grids with high regularity and uniformity were obtained by fs-laser fabrication.

We report on a systematic study of the laser polarization effect on a femtosecond laser filamentation in air. By changing the laser’s ellipticity from linear polarization to circular polarization, the onset position of laser filament formation becomes farther from the focusing optics, the filament length is shorter, and less laser energy is deposited. The laser polarization effect on air filaments is supported by a simulation and analysis of the polarization-dependent critical power and ionization rates in air.

A classical ensemble method is used to investigate nonsequential double ionization (NSDI) of Ar atoms irradiated by linearly polarized few-cycle laser pulses. The correlated-electron momentum distribution (CMD) exhibits a strong dependence on the carrier-envelope phase (CEP). When the pulse duration is four cycles, the CMD shows a cross-like structure, which is consistent with experimental results. The CEP dependence is more notable when the laser pulse duration is decreased to two cycles and a special L-shaped structure appears in CMD. Recollision time of returning electrons greatly depends on CEP, which plays a significant role in accounting for the appearance of this structure.

In this Letter, we experimentally explore the pulse-contrast degradation caused by surface reflection in optical parameter chirped-pulse amplification. Different pump-to-signal conversion efficiencies and post-pulses with different intensities are obtained by changing the seed-pulse or pump-pulse energy and inserting etalons with different reflection coefficients, respectively. The contrast measurements show that the generated first pre-pulse intensity is proportional to the product of the surface reflection intensity ratio and the square of the pump-to-signal conversion efficiency.

Supercontinuum generation (SC) of more than one octave spectrum spanning covering from 400 nm to 820 nm was achieved by pumping a piece of aluminum nitride (AIN) single crystal using a nanosecond 355 nm ultraviolet laser. The AlN with a thickness of ～0.8 mm was grown by an optimized physical vapor transport technique and polished with solidification technology. Compared to previously reported ones, the achieved visible SC exhibited the broadest spectrum spanning from bulk materials pumped by a nanosecond pulse laser. The visible supercontinuum in AlN presents new opportunities for bulk material-based white light SC and may find more potential applications beyond typical applications in integrated semiconductive photoelectronic devices.

We demonstrate a simple technique to filter out the continuum background in filament-induced remote breakdown spectroscopy. By inserting a polarizer before the detector, the continuum background was reduced by more than 42% in filament-induced breakdown spectroscopy at a distance of 3.8 m, while the fluorescence intensity of aluminum atomic lines remains constant. Supercontinuum through self-phase modulation during filamentation mainly contributes to the continuum background. The polarization-gated technique provides a simple way to remove the continuum background in filament-induced remote breakdown spectroscopy.

The temporal profiles of high-power short-pulse lasers reflected from self-induced plasma mirrors (PMs) were measured with high temporal resolution in the sub-picosecond window. The leading front shape of the laser pulse is found to depend sensitively on the laser fluence on the PM surface. Spectral modulation plays a key role in pulse profile shaping. Our findings will extend our knowledge on properly using PMs.

In this Letter, we study the molecular alignment and orientation driven by two elliptically polarized laser pulses. It is shown that the field-free molecular alignment can be achieved in a three-dimensional (3D) case, while the field-free molecular orientation is only along the x and y directions, and that the field-free alignment and orientation along different axes are related to the populations of the rotational states. It is demonstrated that changing the elliptic parameter is efficient for controlling both in-pulse and post-pulse molecular alignment and orientation. The delay time also has an influence on the field-free molecular alignment and orientation.

The femtosecond laser pulses reflected from the self-induced plasma mirror (PM) surface are characterized. More than two orders of magnitude improvement on intensity contrast both in nanosecond and picosecond temporal scales are measured. The far-field distribution, i.e., focusability, is measured to degrade in comparison with that without using a PM. Experiments on proton accelerations are performed to test the effect of the balance between degraded focusability and increased reflectivity. Our results show that PM is an effective and robust device to improve laser contrast for applications.

We experimentally investigate the evolution of the terahertz (THz) waveform and polarization state inside the plasma filament produced by orthogonally polarized two-color pulses. We find that the variation of the THz polarization state along the plasma column is dominantly caused by the relative phase difference and spectra blue shift of the two-color field. Elliptically polarized THz radiation is generated by controlling the initial relative phase and the filament length. The result indicates the coherent control of the polarization state of the THz emission.

We report the upconversion luminescence of lithium fluoride single crystals excited by an infrared femtosecond laser at room temperature. The luminescence spectra demonstrate that upconversion luminescence originates from the color center of F3+. The dependence of fluorescence intensity on pump power reveals that a two-photon excitation process dominates the conversion of infrared radiation into visible emission. Simultaneous absorption of two infrared photons is suggested to produce the F3+ center population, which leads to the characteristic visible emission. The results are on the reveal and evaluation of the simultaneous two-photon absorption on the green upconversion process.

We report on our high-contrast laser based on high-contrast, high-energy seed injection, low-gain optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA), and Nd:glass amplifiers, which can be used as the high-contrast front end of a high-power Nd:glass chirped pulse amplification (CPA) laser system. The energy of the stretched 1053 nm high-contrast seed pulse increases to 60 μJ by optimizing the frequency doubling crystal in the pulse cleaning device. After passing through a two-stage low-gain OPCPA, a 2-pass 2-rod Nd:glass amplifier, and a compressor the amplified pulse of 131 mJ/282 fs is achieved. The third-order correlation scanning measurement shows that the pulse contrast in the tens of ps range is about 10 7–10 8. With the high-contrast seed passing through the stretcher and compressor only, the contrast measurement indicates that the stretching-compressing process leads mainly to the contrast degradation of the amplified pulse.

The self-formation of periodic subwavelength ripples by linear polarized femtosecond laser scanning planar and non-planar tungsten targets on the employed laser wavelength, scanning speed, and energy fluence are examined systematically. The results show that, for a certain laser wavelength, the scanning conditions have no obvious effect to the morphological features of grating structures in the threshold range of laser fluence. The spatial structured period of gratings can be self-consistently interpreted by recently presented physical model of surface two-plasmon resonance. The subwavelength structures on cylindrical surface would be a good method to realize unique surface functions on complex surface of micro-devices.

In this Letter, we numerically simulate the generation of a 1–15 μm mid-infrared supercontinuum (SC) from a highly nonlinear Ge11.5As24Se64.5-based photonic crystal fiber (PCF). This ultra-broadband SC is achieved in a 100 mm long PCF pumped using 85 fs laser pulses operated at 3.1 μm and a peak pulse power of 3 kW. The proposed design offers a flat dispersion profile with two zero dispersion wavelengths. This broad and flat dispersion profile of the Ge11.5As24Se64.5 PCF, combined with the high nonlinearity (2474 W 1 km 1), generates an ultra-broadband SC.

Filamentation-induced water condensation and snow formation are investigated using laser pulses with different chirps and pulse widths. Chirped pulses result in the laser filamentation with different spatial lengths and intensities, which has a great impact on airflow motion and snow formation. The experiments show that snow formation mainly relates to the filament intensity distribution. Negative chirped pulses produce a greater amount of snow because of higher intensity inside the filaments as compared with the positive chirped pulses.

We investigate the reflected field for few-cycle ultra-short laser pulses propagating through resonant media embedded within wavelength-scale structures. Full-wave Maxwell–Bloch equations are solved numerically by using the finite-difference time-domain method. The results show that the spectral feature of the reflected spectrum is determined by the Bragg reflection condition, and that the periodic structure of a dense atomic system can be regarded as a one-dimensional photonic crystal and even as a highly reflective multilayer film. Our study explains the suppression of the frequency shifts in the reflected spectrum based on the Bragg reflection theory and provides a method to control the frequency and frequency intervals of the spectral spikes in the reflected spectrum.

We investigate the terahertz (THz) wave emission from air plasma by analyses and simulations. An elliptically polarized THz wave is generated, whereas a circularly polarized carrier-envelope phase (CEP) stabilized few-cycle laser pulse is applied. Its ellipticity and intensity depend on the pulse duration of the driving laser pulse. And the polarization rotates along the CEP of the driving laser pulse. The THz generation is also simulated for different filament lengths. As the filament extends, the polarization of the generated THz wave rotates along the filament.

In this paper, we present the development and application of a full-aperture backscatter diagnostics system at the Texas Petawatt Laser (TPW) facility. The diagnostic system includes three independent diagnostic stations. With this system, we obtained TPW on-shot focus properties, and high-harmonic spectral emission from solid foils (e.g., Cu and Al) and their Si substrate in an experiment to study laser hole boring, which show the hole-boring mechanism at relativistic intensities. The measured on-target full-power focal spots from ultrathin film targets help determine the optimum target thickness at certain laser contrast parameters for particle acceleration and neutron generation experiment, which is also a relative measurement of shot-toshot intensity fluctuations.

Terahertz (THz) emission from laser-induced air-plasma is presented. The frequency spectra of THz wave are investigated using an air-biased-coherent-detection method. The frequency spectra are measured under different pump-pulse and probe-pulse energies. The frequency spectra become narrow with the increasing pump power and we speculate it caused by collision behavior. Meanwhile, the bandwidth of the frequency spectra is broadened by the increasing probe power, which can be explained by pulse compression. Based on this finding, the optimal frequency spectrum of THz can be achieved by regulating the probe and pump beam.

We report the formation dynamics of periodic ripples on GaAs induced by femtosecond laser pulses (800 nm, 50 fs) via a collinear time-resolved imaging technique with a temporal resolution of 1 ps and a spatial resolution of 440 nm. The onset of periodic ripples emerges in the initial tens of picoseconds in the timescale of material ejection. The periodic ripples appear after irradiation of at least two pump pulses at surface defects produced by the first pulse and the ripple positions kept stable until the formation processes complete. The formation mechanisms of laser-induced periodic ripples are also discussed.

We experimentally show dark pulse generation in all-normal dispersion multiwavelength erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) with a long cavity of figure-of-eight configuration. The EDFL generates a stable multiwavelength laser with 0.47 nm spacing at 24 mW threshold pump power, while the number of lines obtained increases with the pump power. A dark pulse emission is observed as the pump power is increased above 137 mW, with fundamental repetition rate of 29 kHz and pulse width of 2.7 μs. It is observed that the dark pulse train can be shifted to second-, third-, and fourth-order harmonic dark pulses by carefully adjusting the polarization controller. For the fundamental dark pulse, the maximum pulse energy of 32.4 nJ is obtained at pump power of 146.0 mW.

We demonstrate the control of neutral fragmentation of methane (CH4) induced by a Ti:sapphire intense laser pulse (800 nm, 40 fs) by using a pump–probe spectroscopy. Enhancement of the fluorescence emission from the neutral radical CH (A2Δ → X2Π) induced by the intense laser field (~1014 W/cm2) is observed when the wavelength of the probe laser pulse is tuned to 400 nm. The phenomena are explained based on excitation enhancement of the super-excited state of the parent molecule resulting in an increase in neutral dissociation of the methane molecules.

We investigate the angular distribution and average kinetic energy of ions produced during ultrafast laser ablation (ULA) of a copper target in high vacuum. Laser produced plasma (LPP) is induced by irradiating the target with Ti:Sapphire laser pulses of ～50 fs and 800 nm at an angle of incidence of 45o. An ion probe is moved along a circular path around the ablation spot, thereby allowing characterization of the time-of-flight (TOF) of ions at different angles relative to the normal target. The angular distribution of the ion flux is well-described by an adiabatic and isentropic expansion model of a plume produced by solid-target laser ablation (LA). The angular width of the ion flux becomes narrower with increasing laser fluence. Moreover, the ion average kinetic energy is forward-peaked and shows a stronger dependence on the laser pulse fluence than on the ion flux. Such results can be ascribed to space charge effects that occur during the early stages of LPP formation.

We demonstrate a switchable Q-switched and mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) operating in the L-band region using the nonlinear polarization rotation effect. The switching operation is achieved by controlling intensity-dependent loss using a polarization controller. In Q-switching mode, the EDFL produces a pulse train with a repetition rate of 21.1 kHz, pulse width of 7.7 μs, and pulse energy of 13.6 nJ. The EDFL also generates a multi-wavelength comb with a very narrow and constant wavelength spacing of 0.045 nm and optical signal-to-noise ratio of at least 10 dB. During mode locking, the EDFL produces stretched pulses with 3-dB bandwidth of 26.2 nm, pulse width of 350 fs, repetition rate of 2.38 MHz, and pulse energy of 48.56 pJ.

The ionization current generated by two-color laser interaction with different gas atoms can produce strong terahertz (THz) emissions. The ionization potential of atoms determines the ionization rate. Thus, THz emission from different atoms varies. Particle-in-cell simulations are conducted to investigate the THz emission from He, Ne, Ar, and N. The THz emissions as a function of the laser field are different because the ionization rate and electron speed depend on the laser field and ionization potential.

We report a ring cavity passively harmonic mode-locked fiber laser using a newly developed thuliumbismuth co-doped fiber (TBF) as a gain medium in conjunction with a carbon nanotube (CNT)-based saturable absorber. The TBF laser generates a third harmonic mode-locked soliton pulse train with a high repetition rate of 50 MHz and a pulse duration of 1.86 ps. The laser operates at 1 901.6 nm with an average power of 6.6 mW, corresponding to a pulse energy of 0.132 nJ, at a 1 552 nm pump power of 723.3 mW.

Progresses on the development of a high repetition rate mid-IR laser source suitable for the next generation of high-field physics experiments are reported. The presented optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA) source currently delivers carrier-envelope phase (CEP)-stable 67-fs duration optical pulses with up to 18- \mu J output energy at 160-kHz repetition rate. The focusability of the output beam (M2~2) enables peak intensities exceeding 1014 W/cm2 and the record output energy stability-below 1% power fluctuation over 4.5 h makes this source a key enabler for the strong field physics community.

We propose a new mechanism/scheme to explain the ultrafast population inversion of molecular ions which takes place in a time scale comparable to the femtosecond laser pulse. The nonlinear pumping process including the pump photons and the self-generated harmonic photons of the pump laser would be responsible for building up population inversion to realize remote molecule lasers in femtosecond laser filaments in gases. It is shown that the remote laser emissions in molecular ions of gases may be a universal process in the femtosecond laser filament.

We present a numerical study on the evolution of the intense femtosecond pulse propagation in argon by solving the extended nonlinear Schr¨odinger equation which includes the beam diffraction, group velocity dispersion, self focusing, absorption and defocusing due to the electron density, and multiphoton ionization processes. The temporal and spatial profiles and the dynamic picture of the ultrashort pulse propagation in argon under different incident conditions such as initial peak intensity, pressure, beam radius, pulse width, and the focal length are discussed. Because the competition between the self focusing and defocusing effects accompanying with other effects as we mentioned above, we can see the splitting into two or even three peaks of the pulse in the time domain.

THz spectral properties of several of fresh animal tissues are investigated based on the time domain system. Terahertz pulse transmission spectra of different animal tissues slices with different thickness are obtained, and the refractive index, the absorption coefficient, and the extinction coefficient of these tissues are analyzed and discussed. According to the double Debye model, tissue parameters are simulated and calculated. The theoretical and experimental results are matched. These studies are helpful to make further research of the THz spectral performances of human tissues and cancers.

This letter proposes and experimentally demonstrates a simple scheme for generating 40-GBaud carrier-suppressed return-to-zero differential quadrature phase shift keying (CSRZ-DQPSK) modulation signals with tunable pulsewidths using two dual-parallel Mach–Zehnder modulators (DPMZMs). The duty cycle of the generated 40-GHz CSRZ-DQPSK pulse train is continuously tuned from 31% to 62%, with the full-width at half-maximum tuned from 7.8 to 15.5 ps, by electrically tuning the delay between the two sine-clock signals in one of the DPMZMs. Error-free performance is achieved after 320-km transmission.

A new approach is developed to measure the dynamic characteristics of metal sheet under laser shock, including deformation velocity, strain, and strain rate. The detecting laser beam is partially shaded by the target deformation induced by the laser action. A photodiode transforms the received beam intensity real time into an electrical signal which could record the process of the target deformation. The functional relation between the electrical signal and the deformation of the metal sheet is derived. The deformation curve of a thin aluminum and the velocity curve of its deformation are also obtained during the experiment. The results indicate that the average velocity of the elastic deformation of the target can reach 2.999￡103 m/s in the central area. This new method provides an approach in the study of the effect of strain rate on deformation.

Simulation and experimental results for high repetition rate all-normal dispersion Yb:fiber ring lasers are demonstrated for the cavity dispersion from 0.01 to 0.025 ps2. The simulation shows that the pulse spectrum has the potential to reach > 30 nm for the dispersion of 0.014 ps2 under practical pump power. This potential is proved by the experiment. Maximum spectral width of 30 nm is achieved at the repetition rate of 285 MHz under the 850-mW pump power. Average output power is 550 mW and dechirped pulse is 78 fs.

We build a frequency resolved optical gating (FROG) setup based on the second harmonic generation (SHG) FROG to characterize the mid-infrared (MIR) few-cycle laser pulse in single shot basis. Considering the extremely wide bandwidth, we use 20-μm-thick BBO crystal as the nonlinear medium, and correct the spectral response with the frequency summing efficiency. Spatial splitting is adopted to avoid additional material dispersion. In combination with a 4f imaging, this configuration enables the setup to run in single shot. With the central wavelength of 1.8 μm, the measured pulse has a duration of 9.3 fs, which corresponds to about 1.5 cycles.

A scheme of multi-wavelength pulse generator using optical frequency comb and arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. A flattop optical frequency comb is shaped into multiple narrowband Gaussian spectra by using an AWG which contains a number of Gaussian channels, and then multi-wavelength optical pulses are achieved. In the experiment, six wavelength pulses with full width at half-maximum (FWHM) of 14.6 ps at 10 GHz are obtained, and two wavelength-interleaved pulse trains at 20 GHz and four wavelength-interleaved pulse trains at 40 GHz are demonstrated by using the multi-wavelength optical pulses. This scheme has flexibility because the pulse width, the repetition rate, and time-interval can be readily controlled.

An all-optical serial-to-parallel converter (SPC) utilizing two cascaded phase modulators and optical band-pass filters (OBPFs) is experimentally investigated and applied to demultiplex an 80-GBd optical time-division multiplexing (OTDM) return-to-zero (RZ) differential quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) signal. Two 40-GBd OTDM tributaries are error-free demultiplexed with a power penalty of approximately 4 dB in the worst case. With its advantages of compact structure, high speed, low power penalty, simultaneous two-tributary operation, and no assistance from a light source, the SPC has potential for use in future OTDM networks. However, the performance of the SPC still needs improvement.

Femtosecond (fs) pulse laser ablation of silicon targets in air and in vacuum is investigated using a time-resolved shadowgraphic method. The observed dynamic process of the fs laser ablation of silicon in air is significantly different from that in vacuum. Similar to the ablation of metallic targets, while the shock wave front and a series of nearly concentric and semicircular stripes, as well as the contact front, are clearly identifiable in the process of ablation under 1￡105 Pa, these phenomena are no longer observed when the ablation takes place in vacuum. Although the ambient air around the target strongly affects the evolution of the ablation plume, the three rounds of material ejection clearly observed in the shadowgraphs of fs laser ablation in standard air can also be distinguished in the process of ablation in vacuum. It is proven that the three rounds of material ejection are caused by different ablation mechanisms.

Photoconductive semiconductor switches (PCSSs) are widely used in high power ultra-wideband source applications and precise synchronization control due to their high power low-jitter high-repetition-frequency. In this letter, a 14-mm gap semi-insulating GaAs PCSS biased under 20 kV is triggered by a 1064-nm laser with a repetition frequency of 30 Hz. Although the trigger condition is greater than the threshold of the lock-on effect, the high gain mode is not observed. The results indicate that the high gain mode of the PCSS is quenched by decreasing the remnant voltage of pulsed energy storage capacitor.

The features of an attosecond extreme ultraviolet (XUV) field are encoded in the attosecond XUV spectrogram. We investigate the effect of the temporal structures of attosecond XUV fields on the attosecond streaking spectrogram. Factors such as the number of attosecond XUV pulses and the temporal chirp of attosecond XUV pulses are considered. Results indicate that unlike the attosecond streaking spectrogram for an attosecond XUV field with two pulses of a half-cycle separation of streaking field, the spectrogram for the attosecond XUV field with three pulses demonstrates fine spectral fringes in separated traces.

Specified ultra-short pulse waveforms could be synthesized with high-resolution zero-dispersion pulse shaping system. The system and parameters are analyzed and discussed. The pulse shaping system with optimized parameters could resolve the frequency components of ultra-broad bandwidth pulse and prevent the spatial shaping of individual frequency components. The specified waveforms, Meyer wavelet and square root raised cosine pulses, are generated with programmable amplitude and phase masks.

Using Bethe model, the dynamics of the ionization and Coulomb explosion of hydrogen clusters (0.5-5 nm) in high-intensity (10^(15)-10^(17) W/cm2) femtosecond laser pulses have been studied theoretically, and the dependence of energy of protons emitted from exploding clusters on cluster size and laser intensity has been investigated. It is found that the maximum proton energy increases exponentially with the cluster size, and the exponent is mainly determined by the laser intensity. For a given cluster size, the maximum proton energy increases with increasing laser intensity and gets saturation gradually. The calculation results are in agreement with the recent experimental observation.

The ablation in zinc selenide (ZnSe) crystal is studied by using 150-fs, 800-nm laser system. The images of the ablation pit measured by scanning electronic microscope (SEM) show no thermal stress and melting dynamics. The threshold fluence is measured to be 0.7 J/cm2. The ultrafast ablation dynamics is studied by using pump and probe method. The result suggests that optical breakdown and ultrafast melting take place in ZnSe irradiated under femtosecond laser pulses.

unavailable<br&gtH. Sun's e-mail address is shy780327@siom.ac.cn.

Using molecular dynamics (MD) methods combining with two-step radiation heating model, the mechanisms of ablation and the thermodynamic states at Ni surface under femtosecond laser irradiation are investigated. Simulation results show that the main mechanisms of ablation are evaporation and tensile stresses generated inside the target. The velocity of stress wave is predicted to be nearly equal to sound velocity. The rates of ablation at different fluences obtained from simulations are in good agreement with experimental data. Superheating phenomenon is also discovered.

The mechanism of near infrared (IR) focused femtosecond (fs) laser induced defects in silica glasses produced by different methods is systematically investigated through measurements of absorption, fluorescence, and electronic spin resonance (ESR) spectra. The influence of impurities and hydroxyl groups on defects is discussed. The results show that ES silica glasses containing high OH and few defects are much stable under fs laser irradiation. It is also verified that Si Eδ' center formation has no direct relation with chloride ions.

This paper suggests that the linear interferometric correlation (LFC) can be used to measure pulse duration of a few cycles, single cycle or even sub-cycle light pulse. The relations between pulsewidth and LFC curve are derived for Gaussian- and hyperbolic secant-shaped pules. This new method abandons focusing, frequency doubling and filtering in the traditional second order correlation method, meanwhile the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is improved.

The 5th-23rd high-order harmonics generation in rare gases in static gas target with 120-fs, 85-mJ/pulse, 10-Hz laser system was investigated. Compared with the traditional gas target, static gas target is simple to be used in experiment, and the experimental parameters can be easily controlled. The effects on high-order harmonics due to laser intensities (energy), polarization, gas densities, confocal parameter, and phase mismatch were studied in this paper.

We demonstrate the generation of supercontinuum (SC) of over 1350 nm by injecting 790-nm, 15-fs, 74-MHz optical pulses into a 183-mm-long microstructured fiber with combination core and random cladding. The maximum total power of SC is 73 mW with 290-mW pump power from 40* microscope objective. The wavelength and power ranging in SC as well as the polarization states and waveguide modes of the visible light can be tuned by adjusting the input end of MF. In particular, white light has been observed. To our knowledge, this is the first report of tunable properties in SC generation process using microstructured fiber with combination core and random cladding.

The writing of an internal diffraction grating in optical glass plate is demonstrated using low-density plasma formation excited by a high-intensity femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser. The same diffraction efficiency at +-1, +-2, and 0 order isachieved by multiple layers writing. The dependences of diffractive efficiency on the irradiated energy, the speed of writing, the numerical aperture (NA) of the focusing objective, and materials are investigated in detail. The grating isbirefringent. It is attributed to residual stress interaction between glass and femtosecond laser pulse.

In this letter, we describe a coherent subpicosecond terahertz (THz) spectroscopy system based on non-resonant optical rectification for the generation of THz radiation. We studied the two-photon absorption (TPA) of ZnTe induced by femtosecond laser pulses via THz generation, and its influence on the generation of THz radiation. Experimental results demonstrated that the intensity of pump beam against TPA must be traded off to get an optimum generation of THz radiation. As an example, we measured absorption spectrum of water vapor by time-domain spectroscopy (TDS) in the frequency range from 0.5 to 2.5 THz with a high overall accuracy.

The nonparaxial property of the chirped pulsed beam is analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Through the qualitative investigation of the paraxial approximation condition, we show there are chirpinduced changes in the nonparaxial propagation of the chirped pulsed beam. A quantitative nonparaxial correction was developed by use of the perturbational technic and the Fourier transform for a few-cycle chirped pulsed beam with relative small chirp parameter. It was shown that the nonparaxial corrections were enhanced near the leading or trailing edge of pulse depending on weather the chirp parameter is positive or negative. An example for pulsed Gaussian beam driven by a chirped Gaussian pulse is shown in the numerical result to confirm our analysis.

We report our experimental observation of charge domain oscillation in semi-insulating GaAs photoconductive semiconductor switches (PCSSs). The high-gain PCSS is intrinsically a photon-activated charge domain device. It is the photon-activated carriers that satisfy the requirement of charge domain formation on carrier concentration and device length product of 10^(12) cm^(-2). We also show that, because of the repeated process of domain formation, the domain travels with a compromised speed of electron saturation velocity and the speed of light. As a result, the transit time of charge domains in PCSS is much shorter than that of traditional Gunn domains.

In this paper, a simple method of phase correction by using a micromachined deformable mirror (MMDM) is demonstrated. With correction of high-order phases due to propagating through medium, we obtained a clean pulse shape, flattened spectral phase and decreased the femtosecond laser pulse duration. It is shown by our experiment that the deformable mirror is an effective and easy method for adaptive phase correction.

The Ti:sapphire oscillator is used to realize structural change in an organic glass (polymethyl -methacrylate (PMMA)). Single pulse fluence threshold of PMMA and the relation of the breakdown threshold with different numerical aperture objectives are determined using a formula deduced from an existent equation. Three-dimensional dots in the organic glass is performed at the same time.

The influence of circular aperture on the intensity of high-order harmonic generation (HHG) with intense femtosecond laser pulse was studied both experimentally and theoretically. The intensity variety of HHG with the diameter of circular aperture was observed in pulsed Ar gas. The result was discussed and interpreted in terms of the theory of Hankel transform. It is found that using the Gaussian beam truncated by an aperture could enhance the conversion efficiency of HHG at certain conditions.

When femtosecond laser pulses interfere with chirped femtosecond laser pulses in As_(2)S_(3) fiber, a chirped fiber grating is formed. An analytical expression is given to describe the chirped grating, and its Bragg reflectivity is calculated. Because of the high photosensitive effect of As_(2)S_(3) material, the chirped fiber grating has a wide Bragg reflective spectrum and high reflectivity by choosing proper parameters. This indicates that the chirped fiber grating can be used as a stretcher in the femtosecond chirped pulse amplification (CPA) system.

We observe enhanced terahertz (THz) radiation generated from a Si_(3)N_(4) film-coated GaAs photoconductive dipole antenna. Compared to an uncoated antenna with identical electrode geometry and optical excitation power, the Si_(3)N_(4) film-coated antenna has a higher effective DC resistance and larger breakdown voltage. As a result, the peak amplitude of generated THz radiation is significantly enhanced due to the Si_(3)N_(4) film-coated layer.

We studied the ionization and dissociation of polyatomic molecule methane in an intense femtosecond laser field with wavelength of 810 nm and intensities ranging from 1.4×10^(14) to 2.6×10^(15) W/cm2 by mass spectroscopy. Abundant fragment ions were observed in addition to the strong parent ion. The effect of frequency chirp was investigated and it was found that the negatively chirped pulses dramatically enhanced the dissociation probability, which might be used to control the dissociation pathways.

In this work we present experiments by focusing 42 femtosecond laser pulses in air using three different focal length lenses: f=100, 30 and 5 cm. For the longest focal length, only the filament, which is a weak plasma column, is observed. When the shorter focal length lens is used, a high density plasma is generated near the geometrical focus and coexists with a weak plasma channel of the filament. Under the tightest focusing condition, filamentation is prevented and only a strong plasma volume appears at the geometrical focus.

We demonstrate three-dimensional tomographic imaging using a Fresnel lens with broadband terahertz pulses. Objects at various locations along the beam propagation path are uniquely imaged on the same imaging plane using a Fresnel lens with different frequencies of the imaging beam. This procedure allows the reconstruction of an object’s tomographic contrast image by assembling the frequency-dependent images.