Space-time coupling of the carrier-envelope phase in ultrafast optical pulses.

The carrier-envelope phase (CEP) plays an increasingly important role in precise frequency comb spectroscopy, all-optical atomic clocks, quantum science and technology, astronomy, space-borne-metrology, and strong-field science. Here we introduce an approach for space-time calculation of the CEP in the spatially defined region of interest. We find a significant variation of CEP in the focal volume of refracting focusing elements and accurately calculate its value.

Use of Co:MgAlO transparent ceramics in passive Q-switching of an Er:Glass laser at 1.534 µm.

We present the implementation of Co:MgAlO transparent ceramics as passive Q-switching elements in an Er:Glass laser at 1.534 µm. Linearly polarized pulsed output was obtained by Brewster angle inclination of the material Q-switching plate relative to the laser axis.

Radiative and non-radiative transitions of excited Ti cations in sapphire.

We have measured the fluorescence quantum efficiency in Ti:sapphire single crystals between 150 K and 550 K. Using literature-given effective fluorescence lifetime temperature dependence, we show that the zero temperature radiative lifetime is (4.44 ± 0.

Competing radiative and nonradiative decay of embedded ions states in dielectric crystals: theory, and application to Co:AgClBr.

We present a generally applicable theoretical model describing excited-state decay lifetime analysis of metal ions in a host crystal matrix. In contrast to common practice, we include multi-phonon non-radiative transitions competitively to the radiative one. We have applied our theory to Co ions in a mixed AgClBr crystal, and as opposed to a previous analysis, find excellent agreement between theory and experiment over the entire measured temperature range.

Laser induced strong-field ionization gas jet tomography.

We introduce a novel in-situ strong field ionization tomography approach for characterizing the spatial density distribution of gas jets. We show that for typical intensities in high harmonic generation experiments, the strong field ionization mechanism used in our approach provides an improvement in the resolution close to factor of 2 (resolving about 8 times smaller voxel volume), when compared to linear/single-photon imaging modalities. We find, that while the depth of scan in linear tomography is limited by resolution loss due to the divergence of the driving laser beam, in the proposed approach the depth of focus is localized due to the inherent physical nature of strong-field interaction and discuss implications of these findings.