Self-phase modulation of few-optical-cycle pulses and sub-cyclic pulse compression

Summary form only given. Self-phase modulation (SPM) of optical pulses is the physical reason for a large variety of phenomena as optical solitons, spectral broadening and others. One of the most exciting applications is the utilization of SPM in a Kerr medium followed by propagation in a dispersive delay line for pulse compression. While the nonlinear propagation of pulses with the duration of many cycles is rather well studied, the physical phenomena in the ultrashort (few-cycle and sub-cycle) regime are yet not well understood. In this region widely used approximate methods, as a truncated Taylor series approximation for dispersion and the slowly varying envelope approximation (SVEA), are no longer adequate to describe the pulse propagation. In the present talk we investigate this regime and study the possibility to extend the method of pulse compression into the optical subcycle regime. We solve the exact Maxwell equations without the use of the SVEA and apply a global approach to dispersion with a modified Sellmeyer expansion.