Related papers: Characteristics of light reflected from a dense io…
We demonstrate how the shape of femtosecond laser pulses can be tailored in order to obtain maximal ionization of atoms or molecules. For that purpose, we have overlayed a direct-optimization scheme on top of a fully unconstrained…
The development of attosecond technology has enabled the real-time observation of coherent electron motion in atoms, molecules and condensed phases. Experimentally, it is now possible to generate laser pulses of durations of only a few tens…
Electromagnetic radiation in the soft x-ray spectral range ($1-100~\rm{nm}$ wavelengths or $0.01-1~\rm{keV}$ photon energies) is rapidly gaining importance in both fundamental research and industrial applications. At present the degree of…
We present an apparatus that converts every pulse of a pulsed light source to a pulse train in which the intensities of the different pulses are samples of the spatial or temporal frequency spectrum of the original pulse. In this way, the…
Laser-plasma accelerators have become compact sources of ultrashort electron bunches at energies up to the gigaelectronvolt range thanks to the remarkable progress made over the past decade. A direct application of these electron bunches is…
The interaction of intense laser pulses with plasma mirrors has demonstrated the ability to generate high-order harmonics, producing a bright source of extreme ultraviolet (XUV) radiation and attosecond pulses. Here, we report an unexpected…
The propensity of molecules to spatially align along the polarization vector of intense, pulsed light fields is related to readily-accessible parameters (molecular polarizabilities, moment of inertia, peak intensity of the light and its…
We consider optical properties of a gas of molecules that are brought to fast unidirectional spinning by a pulsed laser field. It is shown that a circularly polarized probe light passing through the medium inverts its polarization…
The motion of electrons and ions in medium-sized rare gas clusters (1000 atoms) exposed to intense laser pulses is studied microscopically by means of classical molecular dynamics using a hierarchical tree code. Pulse parameters for optimum…
A novel method of producing intense short wavelength radiation from relativistic electrons is described. The electrons are periodically bunched at the wavelength of interest enabling in-phase super-radiant emission that is orders of…
Since the advent of x-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs), considerable efforts have been devoted to achieve x-ray pulses with better temporal coherence. Here, we put forward a scheme to generate fully coherent x-ray lasers (XRLs) based on…
After decades of supremacy of the Titanium:Sapphire technology, Ytterbium-based high-order harmonic sources are emerging as an interesting alternative for experiments requiring high flux of ultrashort extreme ultraviolet (XUV) radiation. In…
The far-field patterns of atoms diffracted from a classical light field, or from a quantum one in a photon-number state are identical. On the other hand, diffraction from a field in a coherent state, which shares many properties with…
We demonstrate coherent hard electromagnetic radiation generation from reflection by the electron density singularity formed at the relativistic bow wave in laser plasma via particle-in-cell simulations. Wake and bow waves driven by an…
Extreme Scattering Events are radio-wave lensing events caused by AU-sized concentrations of ionised gas. Although they were discovered more than a decade ago we still have no clear picture of the physical nature of the lenses. To…
Novel table-top sources of extreme-ultraviolet light based on high-harmonic generation yield unique insight into the fundamental properties of molecules, nanomaterials, or correlated solids, and enable advanced applications in imaging or…
The quantum cascade laser (QCL) has evolved to be a compact, powerful source of coherent mid-infrared (mid-IR) light. However, its fast gain dynamics strongly restricts the formation of ultrashort pulses. As such, the shortest pulses…
By analyzing ``exact'' theoretical results from solving the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation of atoms in few-cycle laser pulses, we established the general conclusion that differential elastic scattering and photo-recombination cross…
The feasibility to generate correlated photon pairs at variable frequencies is investigated. For this purpose, we consider the interaction of an off-resonant laser field with a two-level system possessing broken inversion symmetry. We show…
Natively, atomic and molecular processes develop in a sub-femtosecond time scale. In order to, for instance, track and capture the electron motion in that scale we need suitable `probes'. Attosecond pulses configure the most appropriate…