Subterawatt few-cycle mid-infrared pulses from a single filament

Filamentation-assisted pulse compression in the gas phase is shown to enable the generation of subterawatt few-cycle pulses in the mid-infrared (mid-IR). With both spatial modulation instabilities and excessive plasma scattering of the mid-IR beam prevented through a careful choice of gas pressure and input peak power, providing a single-filament regime of pulse propagation, peak powers as high as 0.3 TW are achieved in a truly single-mode, almost diffraction-limited 35 fs output at a central wavelength of 4 mu m. Applications in molecular spectroscopy, semiconductor electronics, high-field physics, standoff detection, and innovative x-ray sources are envisaged. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America