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International audienceTheoretical studies of filamentation of ultra-short near-IR laser pulses propagating in a noble gas predict near single-cycle pulses with the intensity being clamped to the field ionization threshold. Experimental results show that this method is carrier envelope offset phase preserving and provides a very simple source for generating few-cycle intense laser pulses. This suggests a very simple design for the generation of ultra-short, sub-femtosecond XUV optical pulses

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Intense few-cycle laser pulses as short as 5.1 fs are generated though self-filamentation in a noble gas atmosphere. We study the dependence of the laser pulse fidelity on the driving pulse profile and chirp as well as on the gas parameters, quantify their pointing stability and spatial quality.

We have enhanced extreme ultraviolet (XUV) harmonics around 90 eV in He using a combination of vacuum ultraviolet harmonics, generated in a Xe capillary, and the strong infrared (IR) laser pulse. With no changes in the IR input energy or the configuration of the He target, the collinearly focused combination of the two fields changed the spectral properties and increased the yield of the XUV harmonics compared to those generated with the IR field alone.