Abstract

We present a soliton effect pulse compression technique that uses self-defocusing cascaded-quadratic nonlinearities, with no fundamental limit to its scalability to high pulse energies and the capability of generating few-cycle pulses with only a frequency-doubling crystal. The conditions for which group-velocity mismatch causes an acceptable perturbation to soliton compression are analyzed and underlie optimization of the compressor. Calculations predict compression to near-single-cycle durations, with compression ratios as high as 100. Initial experiments closely agree with calculations, demonstrating compression to durations under three optical cycles $\left(12\mathrm{fs}\right)$ and generation of $600\mathrm{nm}$ bandwidths.

© 2006 Optical Society of America

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