%0 Journal Article %T Observation of Laser-Pulse Shortening in Nonlinear Plasma Waves %+ Laboratoire d'optique appliquée (LOA) %+ Insitut fur Theoretische Physik I %+ Nuclear Engineering Research Laboratory %A Faure, Jérôme %A Glinec, Yannick %A Santos, J.J. %A Ewald, F. %A Rousseau, Jean-Philippe %A Kiselev, S. %A Pukhov, A. %A Hosokai, T. %A Malka, Victor %< avec comité de lecture %@ 0031-9007 %J Physical Review Letters %I American Physical Society %V 95 %N 20 %P 205003 %8 2005-11-07 %D 2005 %R 10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.205003 %Z PACS 52.38.Kd, 42.65.Jx, 42.65.Re, 52.35.Mw %Z Physics [physics]/Physics [physics]/Optics [physics.optics]Journal articles %X We have measured the temporal shortening of an ultraintense laser pulse interacting with an underdense plasma. When interacting with strongly nonlinear plasma waves, the laser pulse is shortened from 38±2  fs to the 10–14 fs level, with a 20% energy efficiency. The laser ponderomotive force excites a wakefield, which, along with relativistic self-phase modulation, broadens the laser spectrum and subsequently compresses the pulse. This mechanism is confirmed by 3D particle in cell simulations. %G English %L hal-00507934 %U https://polytechnique.hal.science/hal-00507934 %~ X %~ ENSTA %~ CNRS %~ X-LOA %~ X-DEP %~ X-DEP-PHYS %~ PARISTECH %~ ENSTA_LOA