Optical Rectification and Generation of Harmonics Under Condition of Propagation of Few-Cycle Pulses in the Birefringent Medium with Asymmetric Molecules

Abstract

Without using the approximation of slowly varying envelopes, we investigate spectral transformations of vector few-cycle and quasi-monochromatic solitons under propagation in the birefringent medium of asymmetric molecules possessing permanent dipole moments. We show that when an ordinary pulse enters the medium, the self-modulation effect arises. As a result, the spectrum of the ordinary component undergoes significant changes from the violet shift and the generation of odd harmonics with close frequency satellites to the supercontinuum including zero frequency. The spectrum of the extra-ordinary few-cycle pulse also has the properties of a supercontinuum. When a quasi-monochromatic ordinary pulse enters the medium in the spectrum of an extra-ordinary component, the effect of optical rectification with simultaneous generation of the second harmonics is clearly manifested.