Abstract
Filamentation-assisted spatiotemporal dynamics of ultrashort laser pulses in the regime of extreme light powers is shown to enable self-compression of subpetawatt laser pulses to relativistic field intensities and subcycle pulse widths. Our supercomputer simulations demonstrate compression of 6-J, 30-fs laser pulses at a central wavelength of 800 nm to 1.3-fs sub-100-TW broadband field waveforms and reveal the generation of relativistic-intensity subfemtosecond field transients as a result of such a pulse evolution scenario, with multiple filamentation avoided due to low gas pressures and the balance between Kerr and ionization nonlinearities steered toward optimal pulse compression due to the depletion of outer-shell ionization in a high-intensity laser field.
- Received 6 March 2012
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.86.013835
©2012 American Physical Society