Spectral reshaping and pulse compression via sequential filamentation in gases

We provide a theoretical description of the spatio-temporal dynamics of sequential filamentation in noble gases that can lead to pulse compression down to nearly single-cycle pulses. We show that the strong pulse compression occurs as a result of serially-generated on-axis filaments and spectral filtering of an extensive blue-shifted compressible spectra. We show that the dynamics of this sequential filamentation can be readily tuned by varying the gas pressure and can be scaled to various pulse energies. (c) 2008 Optical Society of America.