Intense ultrashort light pulses comprising merely a few wave cycles became routinely
available by the turn of the millennium. The technologies underlying their production and …

The investigation of high-order harmonic generation (HHG) of femtosecond laser pulses by
means of laser-produced plasmas is surveyed. This kind of harmonic generation is an …

Specular reflection is one of the most fundamental processes of optics. At moderate light
intensities generated by conventional light sources this process is well understood. But at …

The generation of extremely bright coherent X-ray pulses in the femtosecond and
attosecond regime is currently one of the most exciting frontiers of physics–allowing, for the …

Attosecond pulses are generated by a macroscopic number of ionizing atoms interacting
with a focused laser pulse, via the process of high harmonic generation. The physics of their …

Recent advances in laser technology have pushed the frontier of maximum intensity
achieved to about 1022W/cm2 and investigators currently believe even higher intensities …

High-order harmonic generation due to the interaction of a short ultrarelativistic laser pulse
with overdense plasma is studied analytically and numerically. On the basis of the …

Under the effect of even simple optical components, the spatial properties of femtosecond
laser beams can vary over the duration of the light pulse. We show how using such …

We study electron-positron pair creation from the Dirac vacuum induced by a strong and
slowly varying electric field (Schwinger effect) which is superimposed by a weak and rapidly …

Experiments on the sub-femtosecond time scale performed in recent years and their
theoretical background are reviewed in this article. We present the essentials of the …