Abstract

In a χ⁽²⁾ material such as BBO, third order nonlinear effects can occur efficiently via a cascaded nonlinearity where light is rapidly converted from the fundamental to the second harmonic and back again with an intensity dependant phase shift. This cascaded nonlinearity has been used to demonstrate a wide range of effects such as solitoti propagation and compression. Here we study soliton-like pulse compression in a BBO crystal of 100fs input pulses looking to see the minimum pulse duration that can be obtained. Included for the first time in a systematic study is the self steepening term[l] which we have found plays a significant role in the pulse dynamics.

© 2007 IEEE