Free-beam spectral self-compression at supercritical peak powers

Opt Lett. 2018 Nov 15;43(22):5693-5696. doi: 10.1364/OL.43.005693.

Abstract

We demonstrate free-beam spectral self-compression of ~100-GW femtosecond laser pulses due to self-phase modulation (SPM) in a transparent dielectric. While all the earlier studies of SPM-induced spectral narrowing have been performed using optical fibers, experiments and simulations presented in this Letter show that this type of spectral transformation can be implemented as a part of a full three-dimensional field-waveform dynamics and can be extended to peak powers ∼105 times higher than the critical power of self-focusing. With a properly chosen initial chirp, spectral self-compression is accompanied by pulse compression, providing spectral-temporal mode self-compression as a whole.