Interaction of a single-cycle laser pulse with a bound electron without ionization (original) (raw)

Ultrashort light pulse research has led to the creation of laser systems generating pulses only a few cycles in duration (Couairon et al., 2006). Now that these ultrashort few-cycle EM pulses exist experimentally, the need for mathematical models to describe these short pulse interactions with matter becomes very important (Porras, 1999). Questions arise on what is the meaning of the index of refraction of a material during a single cycle pulse interaction. There is a growing need to model and to understand the interaction of single ultrashort pulses or a train of ultrashort pulses with matter below the point where strong field effects dominate. This need is driven by the advances made in femtosecond (fs) and attosecond (as) laser technologies. Applications of these ultra short pulses range from free space communications, 3D depth profiling in biological samples, optical communication, high resolution/precision atomic and molecular scale imaging, high speed electronics and optoelectronics in terahertz (THz) regime, behavior of electrons in quantum structures, relativistic physics, high-energy physics, astrophysics to medical applications. Furthermore, ultrafast few cycle lasers are expected to be a promising solution to probe the fastest events in atomic, molecular, biochemical, and solid state systems due to their unique property of being the shortest controlled bursts of energy ever developed (