ABSTRACT
Over the last three decades, laser physics has advanced dramatically. Starting from lasers operated in a continuous wave (cw) regime, scientists have developed techniques for generating periodic sequences of optical pulses with ultrashort durationsbetween a few picoseconds (1 × 10−12 s) and a few femtoseconds (1 × 10−15 s). To put this into perspective, 1 fs compared to 1 s is the same as 1 s compared to 32 million years! Such ultrafast lasers have important applications in medicine, micromachining, optical communications, spectroscopy, and anything else that requires studying physics at extremely high powers or extremely short timescales. For instance, these lasers have been successfully adapted in eye surgery, because ultrashort pulses can make extremely precise cuts with minimum thermal damage.
