Distortion and shaping of ultrashort pulses produced by harmonic generation

Summary form only given. The distortion of an ultrashort pulse from propagation in a linear dispersive medium is well-understood. Not so understood are the distortions which occur when ultrashort optical pulses are generated in the dispersive medium by a nonlinear interaction. This talk will focus on second harmonic generation (SHG), where it is well-known that the second-harmonic (SH) pulse shape differs from the fundamental even for long pulses. This talk will focus on additional pulse distortions important when undistorted ultrashort pulses must be generated as efficiently as possible