Abstract
Production of single-cycle to subcycle optical transients in the attosecond regime requires coherent pulses that have a continuous spectrum covering the blue to uv region. Such blue to uv pulses have been generated through filamentation and four-wave mixing by focusing intense 800 nm pulses from Ti:sapphire lasers in inert gases confined in hollow waveguides. The use of solid material for the same purpose was not attractive because of large dispersion and low damage threshold. Recently we demonstrated that a similarly broad and intense visible continuum can be generated by strategically placing several thin fused silica plates at or near the focus of the laser beam. In this thesis we provide first a review of papers that describe the generation of coherent broadband spectrum over the past few years. Then we introduce the basic principle of the generation scheme used in experiment. Because broadband spectrum generation in our scheme is affected by the power of the 395 nm light, the second harmonic generation (SHG) conversion efficiency is of importance in this thesis and is included in the description. The experimental results of SHG, broadband generation, and pulse compression are then described. Analysis of the results and a brief future plan is shown in the final chapter. So far, we generated a spectrum with a bandwidth covering 320 nm to 480 nm using multiple plates of fused silica. This spectral width can support a transform limited 4 fs. The smaller, simpler setup and higher damage threshold will trigger new interest in the use of bulk material for supercontinuum generation in the uv.