Hamburg 2009 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 55: Poster III

Q 55.45: Poster

Thursday, March 5, 2009, 16:30–19:00, VMP 8 Foyer

Single-cycle gap soliton in a subwavelengthstructure — •Xiao-Tao Xie and Mihai Macovei — Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Saupfercheckweg 1, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany

Few-cycle pulse propagation has attracted considerable attention recently with the discovery of many interesting phenomena such as self-induced transparency or formation of few- and single-cycle solitons [1]. Here we demonstrate that a single-cycle optical pulse can be generated when a pulse possessing few optical cycles penetrates through resonant two-level dense media with a subwavelength structure. The single-cycle gap soliton phenomenon in the full Maxwell-Bloch equations without the slowly varying envelope and rotating wave approximations is observed. Our study shows that the subwavelength structure can support the formation of a single-cycle gap soliton even in the case when the structure period breaks the Bragg condition, suggesting a way towards shortening high-intensity laser fields to few- and even to single-cycle pulse durations.

[1] V. P. Kalosha and J. Herrmann, Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 544 (1999).