Femtosecond-Scale Optics

Abstract

With progress in ultrashort ultraintense laser technologies the peak power of a laser pulse increases year by year. These new instruments accessible to a large community of researchers revolutionized experiments in nonlinear optics because when laser pulse intensity exceeds or even approaches intra-atomic field strength the new physical picture of light-matter interaction appears. Laser radiation is efficiently transformed into fluxes of charged or neutral particles and the very wide band of electromagnetic emission (from THz up to x-rays) is observed. The traditional phenomena of nonlinear optics as harmonic generation, self-focusing, ionization, etc, demonstrate the drastically different dependency on the laser pulse intensity in contrast the well known rules. This field of researches is in rapid progress now. The presented papers provide a description of recent developments and original results obtained by authors in some specific areas of this very wide scientific field. We hope that the Volume will be of interest for those specialized in the subject of laser-matter interactions.