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Laser physics

Terahertz meets attoscience

As the duration of pulses generated by modern lasers approaches that of a single optical cycle, the absolute phase of the wave-packets in such pulses becomes important. A new method for measuring this phase could aid their use in both high-field physics and attosecond pulse generation.

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Figure 1: Electric-field transients of a few-cycle laser pulse (ENIR, red line), and those of each corresponding frequency-shifted terahertz (THz) pulse (ETHz, black line), for two different values of the absolute phase φCE.

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Steinmeyer, G. Terahertz meets attoscience. Nature Phys 2, 305–306 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys304

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