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Over the past decade intense laser fields with a single-cycle duration and even shorter, subcycle multicolour field transients have been generated and applied to drive attosecond phenomena in strong-field physics. Because of their extensive bandwidth, single-cycle fields cannot be emitted or amplified by laser sources directly and, as a rule, are produced by external pulse compression—a combination of nonlinear optical spectral broadening followed up by dispersion compensation. Here we demonstrate a simple robust driver for high-field applications based on this Kagome fibre approach that ensures pulse self-compression down to the ultimate single-cycle limit and provides phase-controlled pulses with up to a 100 μJ energy level, depending on the filling gas, pressure and the waveguide length. Single-cycle and sub-cycle field transients are typically generated by external pulse compression where a combination of nonlinear broadening followed up by dispersion compensation is used. Here, Balciunas et al . use self-compression in a Kagome fibre to generate phase-controlled single-cycle pulses.

The physics of strong-field applications requires driver laser pulses that are both energetic and extremely short. Whereas optical amplifiers, laser and parametric, boost the energy, their gain bandwidth restricts the attainable pulse duration, requiring additional nonlinear spectral broadening to enable few or even single cycle compression and a corresponding peak power increase. Here we demonstrate, in the mid-infrared wavelength range that is important for scaling the ponderomotive energy in strong-field interactions, a simple energy-efficient and scalable soliton-like pulse compression in a mm-long yttrium aluminium garnet crystal with no additional dispersion management. Sub-three-cycle pulses with >0.44 TW peak power are compressed and extracted before the onset of modulation instability and multiple filamentation as a result of a favourable interplay between strong anomalous dispersion and optical nonlinearity around the wavelength of 3.9 μm. As a manifestation of the increased peak power, we show the evidence of mid-infrared pulse filamentation in atmospheric air. Exploring strong-field laser interaction requires pulses that are both energetic and short. Here, the authors demonstrate a mid-IR soliton-like pulse compression in a mm-long YAG crystal, reaching the multi-millijoule energy range and showing pulse filamentation in atmospheric air.

Filamentation of ultrashort laser pulses in the atmosphere offers unique opportunities for long-range transmission of high-power laser radiation and standoff detection. With the critical power of self-focusing scaling as the laser wavelength squared, the quest for longer-wavelength drivers, which would radically increase the peak power and, hence, the laser energy in a single filament, has been ongoing over two decades, during which time the available laser sources limited filamentation experiments in the atmosphere to the near-infrared and visible ranges. Here, we demonstrate filamentation of ultrashort mid-infrared pulses in the atmosphere for the first time. We show that, with the spectrum of a femtosecond laser driver centered at 3.9 μm, right at the edge of the atmospheric transmission window, radiation energies above 20 mJ and peak powers in excess of 200 GW can be transmitted through the atmosphere in a single filament. Our studies reveal unique properties of mid-infrared filaments, where the generation of powerful mid-infrared supercontinuum is accompanied by unusual scenarios of optical harmonic generation, giving rise to remarkably broad radiation spectra, stretching from the visible to the mid-infrared.

When coupled to characteristic, fingerprint vibrational and rotational motions of molecules, an electromagnetic field with an appropriate frequency and waveform offers a highly sensitive, highly informative probe, enabling chemically specific studies on a broad class of systems in physics, chemistry, biology, geosciences and medicine. The frequencies of these signature molecular modes, however, lie in a region where accurate spectroscopic measurements are extremely difficult because of the lack of efficient detectors and spectrometers. Here, we show that, with a combination of advanced ultrafast technologies and nonlinear-optical waveform characterization, time-domain techniques can be advantageously extended to the metrology of fundamental molecular motions in the mid-infrared. In our scheme, the spectral modulation of ultrashort mid-infrared pulses, induced by rovibrational motions of molecules, gives rise to interfering coherent dark waveforms in the time domain. These high-visibility interference patterns can be read out by cross-correlation frequency-resolved gating of the field in the visible generated through ultrabroadband four-wave mixing in a gas phase.

Nowadays, the technical advances call for efficient electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding of transparent devices which may be subject to data theft. We developed Cu–Ag and Ni–Ag meshes on flexible PET substrate for highly efficiency transparent EMI shielding coating. Cu–Ag and Ni–Ag meshes obtained with galvanic deposition of copper and nickel on thin Ag seed mesh which was made by cracked template method. Coefficients S11, S21 and shielding efficiency (SE) were measured for Cu–Ag and Ni–Ag meshes in X-band (8–12 GHz) and K-band (18–26.5 GHz). 90 s copper deposition increase SE from 23.2 to 43.7 dB at 8 GHz with a transparency of 82.2% and a sheet resistance of 0.25 Ω/sq. The achieved maximum SE was 47.6 dB for Cu–Ag mesh with 67.8% transparency and 41.1 dB for Ni–Ag mesh with 77.8% transparency. Cu–Ag and Ni–Ag meshes have high bending and long-term stability. Minimum bend radius is lower than 100 µm. This effect allows to produce different forms of transparent shielding objects, for example, origami method. Our coatings are the leading among all literary solutions in three-dimensional coordinates: of sheet resistance–optical transmittance–cost of produced.

A representative class of matrix functions from the Wiener algebra of order 2 admitting an effective factorization is found. The factorization problem for elements of this class is reduced to a truncated Wiener–Hopf equation with a contracting integral operator. The latter guarantees, as will be shown in the article, the existence of a canonical factorization and its explicit construction for matrix functions from the class under consideration.

We present a compact, uniform generalized Sellmeier-equation (GSE) description of air refraction and its dispersion that remains highly accurate within an ultrabroad spectral range from the ultraviolet to the long-wavelength infrared. While the standard Sellmeier equation (SSE) for atmospheric air is not intended for the description of air refractivity in the mid-infrared and long-wavelength infrared, failing beyond, roughly 2.5 μm, our generalization of this equation is shown to agree remarkably well with full-scale air-refractivity calculations involving over half a million atmospheric absorption lines, providing a highly accurate description of air refractivity in the range of wavelengths from 0.3 to 13 μm. With its validity range being substantially broader than the applicability range of the SSE and its accuracy being at least an order of magnitude higher than the accuracy that the SSE can provide even within its validity range, the GSE-based approach offers a powerful analytical tool for the rapidly progressing mid- and long-wavelength-infrared optics of the atmosphere.

We identify an unusual regime of ultrafast nonlinear dynamics in which an optical shock wave couples to soliton self-compression, steepening the tail of the pulse, thus yielding self-compressing soliton transients as short as the field sub-half-cycle. We demonstrate that this extreme pulse self-compression scenario can help generate sub-half-cycle mid-infrared pulses in a broad class of anomalously dispersive optical waveguide systems.

Compression of optical pulses to ultrashort pulse widths using methods of nonlinear optics is a well-established technology of modern laser science. Extending these methods to pulses with high peak powers, which become available due to the rapid progress of laser technologies, is, however, limited by the universal physical principles. With the ratio P / P cr of the peak power of an ultrashort laser pulse, P , to the critical power of self-focusing, P cr , playing the role of the fundamental number-of-particles integral of motion of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation, keeping this ratio constant is a key principle for the power scaling of laser-induced filamentation. Here, we show, however, that, despite all the complexity of the underlying nonlinear physics, filamentation-assisted self-compression of ultrashort laser pulses in the regime of anomalous dispersion can be scaled within a broad range of peak powers against the principle of constant P / P cr . We identify filamentation self-compression scaling strategies whereby subcycle field waveforms with almost constant pulse widths can be generated without a dramatic degradation of beam quality within a broad range of peak powers, varying from just a few to hundreds of P cr .

A qualitative analysis of the experimental indentation diagrams for topocomposites has been conducted. These diagrams are unloading curves with linear and nonlinear sections at the end of the unloading curve and characterize the interfacial delamination along the coating–substrate interface. It has been shown that the exfoliation in both topocomposites results in a linear relationship between the load and the indentation depth. The width of the hysteresis loops confirms the higher damping capacity of an aluminum nitride coating as compared with a titanium nitride coating. The relevance of studying the effect of the coating structure on the deformation behavior and damage to topocomposites at high contact pressures is shown.