Optics Letters
Ultrashort-pulse modulation in adiabatically prepared Raman media
Sarah Gundry, M. Anscombe, A M Abdulla, Emiliano Sali, John W. G. Tisch, Paul Kinsler, G.H.C. New, J. P. Marangos
Abstract
We demonstrate the efficient modulation of an approximately 100-femtosecond pulse in a Raman medium coherently prepared by nanosecond pulses. Raman sidebands of the ultrashort pulse spanning 360 THz are generated with an efficiency of >5%. We show that the mechanism permitting the sidebands to be generated is the preparation of a significant vibrational coherence in the medium that is robust to disturbance by an intense short pulse. If the observed sidebands were phase compensated, they would form a short train of approximately ten 3-fs pulses. Focusing would permit the realization of a peak intensity of >10(13) W cm(-2).