Single cycle thin film compressor opening the door to Zeptosecond-Exawatt physics

@article{Mourou2014SingleCT,
  title={Single cycle thin film compressor opening the door to Zeptosecond-Exawatt physics},
  author={G{\'e}. Mourou and Sergey Mironov and E. A. Khazanov and Alexander M. Sergeev},
  journal={The European Physical Journal Special Topics},
  year={2014},
  volume={223},
  pages={1181-1188}
}
This article demonstrates a new compression scheme that has the potential to compress a high energy pulse as high as a few hundred Joules in a pulse as short as one optical cycle at 0.8 μm producing a true ultra-relativistic λ3 pulse. This pulse would have a focused intensity of 1024 W/cm2 or a0 of 1000. On interaction with a solid target, this pulse could form an efficient, 10%, relativistic mirror that could further compress the pulse to the atto-zeptosecond regime, with an upshifted… 
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112 Citations
Background Citations
11
Methods Citations
9

112 Citations

Demonstration of Thin Film Compression for Short-Pulse X-ray Generation
Thin film compression to the single-cycle regime combined with relativistic compression offers a method to transform conventional ultrafast laser pulses into attosecond X-ray laser pulses. These…
Thin plate compression of a sub-petawatt Ti:Sa laser pulses
By extending the concept of thin film compression [Mourou et al., Eur. Phys. J. Spec. Top. 223(6), 1181 (2014)] to a thin plate, nonlinear post-compression from 24 fs to 13 fs of sub-petawatt laser…
Single-cycle pulse compression in dense resonant media.
We propose here a new approach for compression and frequency up-conversion of short optical pulses in the regime of extreme nonlinear optics in optically dense absorbing media, providing an…
X-Rays Driven by Single-Cycle, Petawatt Lasers: A Path to Exawatt Pulses
The post-compression of high-energy Petawatt (PW) scale laser pulses offers the promise of maximizing the peak intensity deliverable by a given laser system for the amplified energy produced within…
Relativistic few-cycle pulses with high contrast from picosecond-pumped OPCPA
For experiments in plasma, nuclear, and high-energy physics, there is a strong demand for laser pulses exhibiting relativistic intensity, few-cycle pulse duration, and a very high contrast. Here we…
Focusability of laser pulses at petawatt transport intensities in thin-film compression
Thin-film compression (TFC) and the focusability of high-power laser pulses after self-phase modulation in thin films at transport intensities (∼1  TW/cm2) for petawatt laser systems is demonstrated.…
Proton acceleration by single-cycle laser pulses offers a novel monoenergetic and stable operating regime
Prompted by the possibility to produce high energy, single-cycle laser pulses with tens of Petawatt (PW) power, we have investigated laser-matter interactions in the few optical cycle and ultra…
High energy femtosecond pulse compression
An original method for retrieving the Kerr nonlinear index was proposed and implemented for TF12 heavy flint glass. Then, a defocusing lens made of this highly nonlinear glass was used to generate an…
Use of KDP crystal as a Kerr nonlinear medium for compressing PW laser pulses down to 10 fs
Abstract The input pulse of the laser PEARL with energy of 18 J and pulse duration of about 60 fs was compressed to 10 fs after passage through a 4-mm-thick KDP crystal and reflection at two chirped…
11 fs, 1.5 PW laser with nonlinear pulse compression
: The PEARL laser output pulse with a duration of 60-70 fs was compressed to 11 fs after passing through a 5-mm thick silica plate and reflecting from two chirping mirrors with a total dispersion of…
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