title: Generation of single-cycle mid-infrared pulses via coherent synthesis.
abstract: A new approach for the generation of single-cycle mid-infrared pulses without complicated control systems is proposed, which is based on direct coherent synthesis of two idlers generated by difference frequency generation (DFG) processes. It is found that the waveform of synthesized pulses is mainly determined by the spectra superposition, the carrier-envelope phase (CEP) difference, the relative timing and the chirp ratio between the idlers. The influences of these parameters on the synthesized waveform are also numerically calculated and analyzed via second-order autocorrelation, which offers general guidelines for the waveform optimization. The single-cycle synthesized mid-infrared pulses, which are centered at 4233 nm with the spectrum spanning from 3000 nm to 7000 nm, are achieved by carefully optimizing these parameters. The single-cycle mid-infrared laser source presents the possibility of investigating and controlling the strong field light-matter interaction.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Transient Optics and Photonics, Xi’an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), Xi'an, 710119, China.
authors.forename: Fen
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.forename: Hongjun
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Nan
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Qibing
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Sun
mesh_terms: D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D007259:Infrared Rays; D008029:Lighting / Q000295:instrumentation*; D055096:Optical Devices; D012031:Refractometry / Q000295:instrumentation*; D020349:Surface Plasmon Resonance / Q000295:instrumentation*