Abstract

Few-optical-cycle high-peak-power laser pulses with circular polarization are an important tool in several areas of nonlinear optics and of atomic and molecular physics. In particular such pulses are strongly needed for the measurement of the absolute carrier phase of ultrashort laser pulses, as recently proposed by Dietrich et al. [1]. Moreover they could be extremely useful for the investigation of Above Threshold Ionization [2] and High-order Harmonic Generation in the few-optical-cycle regime, and for the generation and measurement of attosecond pulses.

© 2001 EPS