Fundamentals of Highly Non-Degenerate Cascaded Four-Wave Mixing

• Type: Another Publication in an International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2015

Authors

Rosa Weigand (Author) Other; Helder M Crespo (Author) FCUP

Journal

Title: Applied Sciences

Vol. 5

Pages: 485-515

Publisher: MDPI

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 7 Citations

Scopus - 7 Citations

Scientific classification

FOS: Engineering and technology > Materials engineering

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-00G-S98

DOI: 10.3390/app5030485

Abstract (EN): By crossing two intense ultrashort laser pulses with different colors in a transparent medium, like a simple piece of glass, a fan of multicolored broadband light pulses can be simultaneously generated. These newly generated pulses are emitted in several well-defined directions and can cover a broad spectral range, from the infrared to the ultraviolet and beyond. This beautiful phenomenon, first observed and described 15 years ago, is due to highly-nondegenerate cascaded four-wave mixing (cascaded FWM, or CFWM). Here, we present a review of our work on the generation and measurement of multicolored light pulses based on third-order nonlinearities in transparent solids, from the discovery and first demonstration of highly-nondegenerate CFWM, to the coherent synthesis of single-cycle pulses by superposition of the multicolored light pulses produced by CFWM. We will also present the development and main results of a dedicated 2.5-D nonlinear propagation model, i.e., with propagation occurring along a two-dimensional plane while assuming cylindrically symmetric pump beam profiles, capable of adequately describing noncollinear FWM and CFWM processes. A new method for the generation of femtosecond pulses in the deep-ultraviolet (DUV) based on FWM and CFWM will also be described. These experimental and theoretical results show that highly-nondegenerate third-order nonlinear optical processes are formally well understood and provide broader bandwidths than other nonlinear optical processes for the generation of ultrashort light pulses with wavelengths extending from the near-infrared to the deep-ultraviolet, which have many applications in science and technology.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 31