Linear and Nonlinear Propagation of Short Light Pulses

Abstract

Over the pat decades techniques for the production and manipulation of short optical pulses have progressed at an accelerated rate, reducing the time interval accessible to measurements from the millisecond in ∼1949 to the femtosecond regime in ∼1985. In particular, in the last ten years, major developments have included versatile and stable laser sources with wide spectral coverage, and new methods for shaping and controlling light pulses. This contribution presents some of the background necessary for the treatment of the subject of the book, by considering the basic physical principles and phenomena.

We shall first deal with pulses that do not change the characteristics of the media in which they propagate. This case will provide the occasion for the introduction of many fundamental concepts and for the examination of the interplay of dispersion and absorption, which is embodied in the Kramers-Kronig relations.

We shall then consider pulses so intense that the characteristics of the media they go through are affected by them. This case will give the opportunity to tie nonlinear optics to pulse shaping and propagation and to deal with such phenomena as pulse break-up and soliton waves in nonlinear dispersive media.