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Theoretical 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intense, well-controlled light pulses with only a few optical cycles start to play a crucial role in many fields of physics, such as attosecond science. We present an extremely simple and robust technique to generate such carrier-envelope offset (CEO) phase locked few-cycle pulses, relying on self-guiding of intense 43-fs, 0.84 mJ optical pulses during propagation in a transparent noble gas. We have demonstrated 5.7-fs, 0.38 mJ pulses with an excellent spatial beam profile and discuss the potential for much shorter pulses. Numerical simulations confirm that filamentation is the mechanism responsible for pulse shortening. The method is widely applicable and much less sensitive to experimental conditions such as beam alignment, input pulse duration or gas pressure as compared to gas-filled hollow fibers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]