| Observation and control of ultrafast processes such as chemical reactions, biological interactions, and atomic processes is at the heart of the field of ultrafast physics. Decreasing the pulse duration enables probing ever-shorter events. The main contribution of this work is the generation and the characterization of single-cycle optical pulses. When the shape of the electric field consists of a single oscillation under the temporal envelope, we approach a new regime in physics: the electronic motion is now controlled directly by the electric field. We describe a Fourier approach to ultrashort pulse generation which consists of combining discrete, appropriately phased spectral components of a very wide coherent spectrum. In our experiments, all of the sidebands are generated by exciting a Raman transition in a diatomic gas near maximum coherence using two intense pulsed lasers. The resulting molecular motion modulates the two driving lasers to produce over four octaves of bandwidth from vacuum ultraviolet to near infrared. The spectral components are mutually coherent and are spaced by the frequency of the Raman transition. We select a subset of the produced spectrum and electronically adjust the phases of the individual sidebands using a liquid crystal spatial light modulator. The synthesized waveforms are characterized by measuring the UV signal generated by four-wave nonresonant mixing inside a xenon cell. |
