Ultrafast Phenomena X presents the latest advances in ultrafast technology and the study of ultrafast phenomena. It includes picosecond and femtosecond processes in physics, chemistry, and biology as well as engineering applications of ultrafast technology. Ultrafast laser and measurement technology on the picosecond and femtosecond time scales has a profound impact in a wide range of scientific and engineering applications and extends also towards real-world applications in biology, high-speed communication and material diagnostics. This book summarizes results presented at the 10th Ultrafast Phenomena Conference and describes the state of the art of this exciting and rapidly advancing field.

Klappentext

This volume contains papers presented at the Tenth International Conference on Ultrafast Phenomena held at Del Coronado, California, from May 28 to June 1, 1996. The biannual Ultrafast Phenomena Conferences provide a forum for the discussion of the latest advances in ultrafast optics and their applications in science and engineering. The Ultrafast Phenomena Conference maintains a broad international representation with 391 participants from 18 countries, including 94 students attending the conference. The multidisciplinary character of this meeting provides a cross-fertilization of ultrafast concepts and techniques among various scientific and engineering disciplines. The enthusiasm of the paticipants, the originality and quality of the papers that they presented, and the beautiful conference site combined to produce a very successful and enjoyable meeting. Progress was reported in the technology of generating ultrashort pulses, in­ cluding new techniques for improving laser-pulse duration, output power, wave­ length range, and compactness. Ultrafast spectroscopy continues to impact on and expand the knowledge base of fundamental processes in physics, chemistry, biol­ ogy and engineering. In addition ultrafast phenomena now extends to real-world applications in biology, high-speed communication, and material diagnostics. The Tenth Ultrafast Phenomena Conference was highlighted by a 'special event' in which the developments of the previous conferences were reviewed in a panel discussion by G. Mourou, E. Ippen, A. Migus, A. Laubereau and R. Hochstrasser.

Inhalt

I Ultrafast Lasers and Sources.- Advances in All-Solid-State Ultrafast Lasers.- Physics and Scaling of Saturable Bragg Reflector-Modelocked Diode-Pumped Solid State Ultrafast Lasers.- Ultrabroad-Band Ring Oscillator for Short Pulse Generation.- Frequency-Dependent Mode-Size in Kerr-Lens Modelocked Lasers.- Toward Coherent Control on a Sub-10fs Time Scale.- Generation Dynamics of Solid-State Lasers Mode Locked by Antiresonant Loop.- Ultraviolet Picosecond Pulses from an All-Solid-State Ce:Flouride Master Oscillator and Power Amplifier System.- High-Power and Frequency-Doubled Stretched-Pulse Fiber Laser.- An Electronically Wavelength Tunable Mode-Locked Fiber Laser Using an All-Fiber Acousto-Optic Tunable Filter.- Femtosecond Chirped-Pulse Multifrequency Sources.- "Pulse Shaping" of Incoherent Light by Use of a Liquid Crystal Modulator Array.- High-Resolution Ultrafast Laser Pulse Shaping for Quantum Control and Terabit per Second Communications.- 10- to 80-Gb/s, Highly Extinctive Electrooptic Pulse Pattern Generation.- II Parameteric Generation.- Ultrafast Visible Optical Parametric Oscillators: A Route to Tunable Sub-10-Femtosecond Pulses?.- Tunable 50 fs Pulses in the Visible by Up-Conversion of Parametrically Generated Pulses in the Near Infrared.- A Potassium Niobate OPA Pumped by an Amplified Ti:Sapphire Laser.- Midinfrared Femtosecond Pulse Generation Using a 250 kHz Ti:Sapphire Pumped BBO OPA and DFG in AgGaS2.- Generation and Applications of Mid-Infrared Femtosecond Pulses Obtained by Optical Rectification of 15-fs Near-Infrared Pulses.- Fiber Laser Pumped Femtosecond Optical Parametric Generator.- III Terahertz Sources and Techniques.- Previously Impossible Measurements Made Possible by THz-Time-Domain Spectroscopy.- Noncontact Semiconductor Wafer Characerization with T-Rays.- Electro-Optic Imaging of THz Beams.- High Resolution Sub-Millimeter Spectroscopy Using Mode-Locked Laser Driven Electro-Optic Antennas.- Pulsed Terahertz Spectroscopy of Solutions: Experiment and Memory Function Analysis.- Free-Space Electro-Optic Samplers.- Tunable Photoconducting Emitters and Detectors of Free Space Terahertz Radiation.- Superradiant Terahertz Emission from Bloch Oscillations.- Transient Grating with Asymmetric Arms for Electro-Optic Generation of THz Radiation.- Terahertz Waveform Synthesis and Enhanced Narrow-Band Terahertz Generation Using Femtosecond Pulse Shaping.- Diffracting Fourier-Transform Spectroscopy Using Mid-Infrared Femtosecond Pulses.- IV High Brightness Light Pulses: Systems and Techniques.- Generation of 25 TW, 32 fs Pulses at 10 Hz.- Sub-20-fs Multiterawatt Laser and Ultrafast X-Ray Source.- 16 fs Pulse Generation and Measurement in the Ultraviolet and Vacuum Ultraviolet.- High Energy 10 fs Pulses by a New Pulse Compression Technique Using Hollow Quartz Waveguides.- On the Pulse Quality Limitations in Ultrashort Chirped Pulse Amplification.- Chirped-Pulse Amplifiaction with a Fiber Stretcher and a Grism Compressor.- Regenerative Pulse Shaping: A New Technique for Ultrabroadband Amplification.- Compensation of SPM-Induced Pulse Distortions in Chirped-Pulse Amplification Systems.- V High-Field Physics and X-Ray Generation.- Laser Electron Interactions at Critical Field Strength.- Nonlinear Optics in the Relativistic Regime.- Excitation of Surface Electromagnetic Waves in High-Temperature Near-Surface Plasmas; Resonance Second Harmonic Generation.- Selfchannelling of Intense Femtosecond Optical Pulses Through Air in the Transient Regime.- Enhanced Ionization of Molecular Ions in Intense Laser Fields: Experiments on the Iodine Melecule.- Direct Observation of Coherent Two-Photon Medium Response Induced by Femtosecond Deep UV-Laser Pulses in Krytpon.- Picosecond Time-Resolved Pump-Probe XUV Absorption L-Edge Spectroscopy.- Measurement of High Harmonic Pulse Durations Via Laser Assisted X-Ray Photoionization.- Energy Penetration of Ultrahigh Intensity Short Laser Pulses into Overdense Plasmas Through Solitons.- Observation of Relativistic Self-Focusing, Self-Channeling and Filamentation of Multiterawatt Ultra-Short Laser Pulses in Optical-Field Ionized Argon Gas Jets.- Harmonic Generation from a Sharp Plasma-Vacuum Boundary.- Enhanced High-Harmonic Generation with Ultrashort 25 fs Pulses.- Femtosecond X-Rays Generated via 90° Thomson Scattering.- Double-Pulse Pumped Efficient X-Ray Laser Utilizing Transient Gain.- Generation of Short-Pulse XUV Radiation by Phase-Matched High-Order Difference-Frequency Mixing in Plasmas.- Measurement of Laser Wakefield Oscillations by Femtosecond Longitudinal Interferometry.- VI Applications of Femtosecond Sources and Novel Techniques.- Multiphoton Molecular Excitation to Illuminate Non-linear Laser Microscopy.- Two-Photon Excitation Scanning Microscopy with a Compact SBR-Modelocked Diode-Pumped Cr:LiSAF Laser.- Two-Photon Excited Flourescence Microscopy with Time and Wavelength Resolved Detection.- Femtosecond Optical Spectroscopy and Scanning Probe Microscopy.- Ultrafast Equal Pulse Correlation Measurements in GaAs Structures with a Near-Field Microscope.- Optical Coherence Tomographic Imaging Using a Mode Locked Cr4+:Forsterite Laser Source.- Modelling of the Propagation of Light in Turbid Media from Femtosecond Pulse Transmission Measurements.- Temporal Polarization Gating of Light Propagating in Highly Scattering Medium.- Atomic Streak Camera Probing of Wave Packet Decay Plus a FIR Streak Camera Concept.- Demonstration of a Sub-Picosecond X-Ray Streak Camera.- Time-Space Conversion Using Chirped Pulses for Three-Dimensional Shape Measurements.- 3-D Optical Storage and Engraving Inside Transparent Materials.- Mult…