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Journal of Nonlinear Optical Physics & Materials

SUBFEMTOSECOND HIGH-INTENSITY UNIPOLAR ELECTROMAGNETIC SOLITONS AND SHOCK WAVES

A. E. Kaplan, P. L. Shkolnikov

Published Oct 1, 1995• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We show that atomic gasses can support solitary pulses of unipolar, non-oscillating EM-field ("EM-bubbles") of up to the atomic amplitude, with their length ranging from ~10−9 s to ~10−16 s , which propagate without dispersion and are stable and insensitive to the change of gas density. We found the condition on the atomic potential necessary for formation of EM-bubble. Atomic gasses can also support an EM shock which is a precursor of a cw ionizing field.

DOI
10.1142/s0218863595000379

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We demonstrate the feasibility of strong (up to atomic fields) and super-short (few- or even sub-femtosecond) sub-cycle (non-oscillating) electromagnetic solitons — EM bubbles (EMBs) in a gas of two-level atoms, as well as EMBs and pre-ionization shock waves in classically nonlinear atoms. We show that EMBs can be generated by existing sources of radiation, including sub-picosecond half-cycle pulses and very short laser pulses. We investigate how EMB characteristics are controlled by those of originating pulses. Our most recent results are focused on the related transient phenomena, including EMB formation length, multi-bubble generation and shock-like waves. We also develop the theory of the diffraction-induced transformation of sub-cycle pulses in linear media. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Recently, we have proposed two avenues to generating ultrashort (potentially, subfemtosecond) and intense (up to atomic fields) nonoscillating pulses: a high-repetition train of such pulses can be produced in multicomponent stimulated Raman scattering [1], and a single pulse ("electromagnetic bubble" -- EMB) or several of them can result [2,3] from the propagation of an initially broad unipolar pulse (half-cycle pulse -- HCP [4]) in an appropriate nonlinear medium. Such pulses could cause a substantial "shake-up" excitation or ionization of an atomic system within the time much smaller than any characteristic time of the system. These "superpulses" would open a new chapter in nonlinear optics and atomic and molecular physics, both as a new probing tool and a source of new effects. In the present paper, we consider one of them: backward and multi-echo field ionization [5].
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