Abstract

We discuss here two avenues to generate powerful near- and subfemtosecond pulses: (1) The phase-locking¹ of multicomponents of stimulated cascade Raman scattering (CSRS) that can produce an almost periodic train of powerful subfemtosecond pulses, with pulses as short as ~0.2 fs spaced by ~8 fs. (2) The generation of powerful "EM-bubbles" (EMBs),² unipolar very short solitons propagating in a gas of two-level or classically nonlinear atoms. This effect can generate a single EMB, or a few EMBs with controllable parameters, easily separable into individual EMBs.

© 1997 Optical Society of America