Pulse shaping technology of intense femtosecond laser pulses for molecule control

Abstract

We demonstrated accurate pulse shaping of amplified femtosecond laser pulses by modulating the amplitude and the phase prior to regenerative chirped-pulse amplification. Based on a spectral interferometer, the pulse shaper was adjusted to compensate for a transfer function of the amplifier consisting of the gain narrowing and self-phase modulation. We performed experiments aiming at selective bond breaking in such as a simple C-C-O structure by utilizing the comprehensive pulse shaping technology, which can produce almost arbitrarily shaped 800-nm laser pulses in the amplitude and the phase at peak intensities up to ∼4 × 1015 W/cm2 range. © 2007 Springer-Verlag.