Pulse self-compression to the single-cycle limit by filamentation in a gas with a pressure gradient
Résumé
We calculate pulse self-compression of a 30 fs laser pulse traversing gas with different pressure gradients. We show that an appropriate density profile brings significant improvement to the self-compression by filamentation. Under an optimal pressure gradient, the pulse duration is reduced to the single optical cycle limit over a long distance, allowing easy extraction into an interaction chamber.