This book reports the substantial progress that has been made recently in generating and applying powerful ultrashort light pulses. It will be of interest to researchers and students wishing to become familiar with ultrafast phenomena in physics, chemistry, biology and opto-electronics.

Inhalt
I Generation and Amplification of Ultrashort Light Pulses.- Towards a Laboratory X-Ray Laser.- Amplification of Femtosecond Light Pulses.- Generation of Tunable Femtosecond Pulses of High Energy.- Analysis of Actively Mode-Locked Lasers with Intracavity Second Harmonic Generation.- Design Considerations for a Linear Cavity Femtosecond Dye Laser.- Ultrashort Pulse Generation from the Sweeping Oscillator Dye Laser.- Ultrastable Subpicosecond Nd:Glass Laser and Stretched Pulse OPOs: A New Approach to High Intensity Tunable fs Light Fields.- Femtosecond Pulse Generation from a Titanium-Doped Sapphire Laser.- Colliding Pulse vs Mirror Contacted Dye Cell Mode-Locking Performances of a Nd:YAG Laser.- Diode Pumped cw Mode-Locked Nd:Glass Laser: Performance and Limitations.- Substructure in ps Light Pulses Emitted by Gain Switched Semiconductor Lasers.- Generation of Tunable Femtosecond Pulses by Selective Amplification of a Continuum.- Spectral Diagnostic Method for Temporal Study of Subpicosecond Distributed Feedback Dye Lasers.- Intensity Dependent Transmission of Window Materials at 248 nm.- On the Extension of the Matrix Formalism for the Calculation of Group Delay and Group Velocity Dispersion in Linear Optical Elements.- Limits of Pulse Generation in cw Mode-Locked Dye Lasers.- A Dye Laser Synchronously Pumped by Intense Subpicosecond Pulses from a Negative Feedback Stabilized Nd:Glass Laser.- Beta-Barium Borate Widely Tunable Picosecond Optical Parametric Oscillators.- Generation and Amplification of Picosecond Pulses in the 10µm Region.- II Measurement, Devices and Methods.- Lateral High Speed Photodiodes on Semi-insulating InGaAs:Fe.- High Resolution Optical Time Domain Reflectometry for the Characterization of Integrated Optical Devices.- Pulsed Excitation of aGaAlAs Semiconductor Laser by Picosecond Optoelectronic Switches.- Investigation of Internal Signal Propagation of an Integrated Circuit with High Temporal Resolution.- Two-Photon Luminescence in CsI:Na and Its Application for the Measurement of UV Femtosecond Light Pulses.- Picosecond Resolution in Optical Coherent Transient Experiments with Nanosecond Sources.- Enhancement of Second Harmonic Generation from a Silver Island Film by Self-Polarization.- Spectral Holography of Ultrashort Pulses and Photochronography of Ultrafast Processes with Pico- to Femtosecond Time Resolution.- Subfemtosecond Studies of Four-Photon Scattering in Dye Solutions.- Theoretical Study of Coherent Artifacts in Pump-and-Probe Experiments.- III Light Pulse Shaping and Nonlinear Optical Phenomena.- Soliton Generation from c.w. Diode Laser Signals.- Nonlinear Propagation of Ultra-short Optical Pulses in Activated Fibers.- Influence of Various Nonlinear Optical Processes on Femtosecond Light Pulse Propagation in Fibers.- Distortion of Femtosecond Laser Pulses in Optical Systems and Their Applications.- Optical Pulse Shaping by Spectral Hole Burning Filters.- High Time Resolution with Incoherent Light in the Raman Fringe Decay.- Temporal and Spatial Evolution of Picosecond Phonon-Polariton Pulses in Crystals.- IV Applications to Solid-State Physics.- Femtosecond Studies of Nonlinear Optical Processes in Wide-Gap II-VI Semiconductors.- Ultrafast IR Probing of Highly Excited Semiconductors.- Picosecond Spectroscopy of Nonthermalised Electron-Hole Plasma in Highly Excited CdS1xSexCrystals.- Transient Energy Transfer in ps Two-Photon Absorption Experiments in CdTe at Room Temperature.- Femtosecond Dynamics of Highly Excited CuBr Microcrystallites.- Study of Some Optical and Electronic Propertiesof GaAs Through Picosecond Laser Induced Transient Gratings.- Investigation of the Gunn Effect in GaAs by Picosecond Photoconductivity.- Time-Resolved Luminescence Studies of Vertical Transport in Short-Period Superlattices with Enlarged Well.- Femtosecond Spectroscopy of Semiconductor Colloids.- Pump Energy Dependent Relaxation in Semiconductor-Doped Glasses.- V Applications to Molecular Spectroscopy.- Molecular Photochemistry with Femtosecond Laser Pulses.- Femtosecond Spectroscopy of Polydiacetylene and Polythiophene.- Investigations on the Dynamics of Hydrogen Bonds by Picosecond IR Spectroscopy.- Sub-picosecond Time-Resolved Intramolecular Electronic Energy Transfer in Bichromophoric Molecules.- Sub-picosecond Transient Optical Absorption Spectroscopy of the Spiropyran-Merocyanine Photochromism.- Observation of Time-Resolved Absorption Anisotropy Decay Resulting from Rotation of Free Organic Molecules.- Rotation of Dye Molecules Induced by Optical Excitation.- Fast Structural Transformations of Organic Molecules.- Photoisomerization Dynamics of DODCI.- Time-Resolved Resonance-CARS Spectroscopy of the First Excited Singlet State of Stilbene-3 and of Cyanine Photoisomers.- Time-Resolved Absorption Spectroscopy of Polymethine J-Aggregates.- Light-Induced Intramolecular Proton-Transfer in a System in Which the Excited Donor is Separated from the Acceptor by a Flexible Alkyl Chain.- Formation, Relaxation and Recombination of Polarons and Bipolarons in Poly(1,4-phenylene-1-phenylvinylene) (MP-PPV) in the Picosecond Time Region.- Non-Markovian Effects of Vibronic Relaxation in Spectroscopy with Intense USP and In-Phase Modulation of USP in a Saturable Absorber.- The Primary Steps of the Photosynthetic Process in Bacteria at Low Temperatures.- Femtosecond Absorption Spectroscopy of Primary Processes in Bacterial Photosynthesis Reaction Centers.- Evidence of Excited State Absorption of Strongly Interacting Chlorophylls Within Light-Harvesting Pigment Protein Complexes in Photosynthetic Systems.- Index of Contributors.