A comprehensive guide to a new technology for enabling high-performance spectroscopy and laser sources Resonance Enhancement in Laser-Produced Plasmas offers a guide to the most recent findings in the newly emerged field of resonance-enhanced high-order harmonic generation using the laser pulses propagating through the narrow and extended laser-produced plasma plumes. The author—a noted expert in the field—presents an introduction and the theory that underpin the roles of resonances in harmonic generation. The book also contains a review of the most advanced methods of plasma harmonics generation at the conditions of coincidence of some harmonics, autoionizing states, and some ionic transitions possessing strong oscillator strengths. Comprehensive in scope, this text clearly demonstrates the importance of resonance-enhanced nonlinear optical effects leading to formation of efficient sources of coherent extreme ultraviolet radiation that can be practically applied. This important resource: Puts the focuses on novel applications of laser-plasma physics, such as the development of ultrashort-wavelength coherent light sources Details both the theoretical and experimental aspects of higher-order harmonic generation in laser-produced plasmas Contains information on early studies of resonance enhancement of harmonics in metal-ablated plasmas Analyzes the drawbacks of different theories of resonant high order harmonic generation Includes a discussion of the quasi-phase-matching and properties of semiconductor plasmas Written for researchers and students in the fields of physics, materials science, and electrical engineering who are interested in laser physics and optics, Resonance Enhancement in Laser-Produced Plasmas offers an introduction to the topic and covers recent experimental studies of various resonance processes in plasmas leading to enhancement of single harmonic.

Nanostructured Nonlinear Optical Materials: Formation and Fabrication covers the analysis of the formation, characterization and optical nonlinearities of various nanostructures using different methods. It addresses many areas of research in the field, including the modification of the surfaces of materials for the formation of various nanostructures, transmission electron microscopy and time-of-flight mass spectroscopy studies of ablated bulk and nanoparticle targets, the low-order nonlinearities of metal and semiconductor nanoparticles, the nonlinear refraction and nonlinear absorption of carbon-contained nanoparticles, and low- and high-order harmonic generation in nanoparticle-contained plasmas, amongst other topics. The book is an essential reference for all nanomaterials researchers in the fields of photonics, materials, physics, chemistry and nanotechnology. Present complete coverage of the formation, characterization and optical nonlinearities of nanostructures Builds on basic theory, showing the strengths of the application of nanostructures in optical materials Written by a leading expert in the subject

The stabilization of the carrier-envelope phase of ultrashort laser pulses went through a rapid development from the first publication of a feasible concept in 1999 to being a mature tool for frequency metrology and attosecond science now. Using this technique, stabilization of the timing between the carrier wave and the envelope of a laser pulse with residual jitters of only 100 attoseconds has become possible. Naturally, the questions arises whether and how this can be further improved. The current work is devoted to determining the physical mechanisms which generate jitter in carrier-envelope phase stabilization. Furthermore, it is investigated whether there is a fundamental limitation to the achievable accuracy. To this end, two methods for removal of technical noise contributions are initially discussed. Different interferometer topologies are investigated and spurious interferometer noise is reduced by more than 40% using a commonpath layout. A novel two-detector based carrier-envelope phase retrieval technique for amplified laser pulses is demonstrated enabling the circumvention of the shot-noise constraint of the conventional extraction method to the maximum extent possible. Next, a novel feed-forward stabilization concept is developed that enables carrier-envelope phase stabilizations with only 20 attosecond residual timing jitter between carrier and envelope of the laser pulse. This feed-forward method is unconditionally stable against drop-out and permits the generation of a train of pulses with identical electric field structure with no additional measures. As the feed-forward concept widely avoids the technical noise sources of the conventional feedback stabilization, the resulting noise spectra exhibit only two unavoidable residual noise mechanisms: a highfrequency white noise floor stemming from shot noise in the carrier-envelope phase detection and a drift-like contribution with 1/f noise characteristics. Finally, the drift-like residual noise mechan

This thesis presents a systematic discussion of experimental approaches to investigating the nonlinear interaction of ultrashort visible strong fields with dielectrics directly in the time domain. The key finding is the distinctly different peak-intensity dependence of the light-matter energy transfer dynamics on the one hand, and the observed transient optical and electronic modifications on the other. As the induced electron dynamics evolve on sub-femtosecond timescales, real-time spectroscopy requires attosecond temporal resolution. This allows a range of parameters to be identified where the optical properties of the samples exposed to ultrashort light fields suffer dramatic changes allowing signal metrology while real absorption leading to dissipation is essentially absent. These findings indicate the feasibility of efficient optical switching at frequencies several orders of magnitude faster than current state-of-the-art electronics and thus have far-reaching technological consequences.