Radiation from Wavepackets

We discuss the inevitable dissipation of energy that must accompany the creation of a pulse-medium excitation state in a passive dielectric. We show that there is a minimum amount of energy that an optical pulse must deposit in the medium to create a given pulse-medium state and that energy deposited beyond this minimum value must be dissipated in the medium. We compare this notion of dissipation to a related concept found by determining the fraction of energy stored in a medium that is irrecoverable by future fields. These two notions of dissipation are model-independent and form upper and lower bounds for real-time loss. Any model-dependent notion of loss that falls outside these bounds has serious conceptual difficulties. We show that a traditional notion of real-time loss based on a multiple-Lorentz oscillator model fails to give reasonable results in classes of passive linear media near EIT, while the notions of loss we introduce give sensible results for all passive media.

We demonstrate a technique for determining optical constants of materials in the extreme UV from the ratio of p-polarized to s-polarized reflectance. The measurements are based on laser-generated high-order harmonics, which have easily rotatable linear polarization but that are prone to brightness fluctuations and systematic drifts during measurement. Rather than measure the absolute reflectance, we extract the optical constants of a material from the ratio of p-polarized to s-polarized reflectance at multiple incident angles. This has the advantage of dividing out long-term fluctuations and possible systematic errors. We show that the reflectance ratio is as sensitive as the absolute reflectance to material optical properties. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America

We describe an extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) polarimeter that employs laser-generated high-order harmonics as the light source. The polarimeter is designed to characterize materials and thin films for use with EUV light. Laser high harmonics are highly directional with easily rotatable linear polarization, not typically available with other EUV sources. The harmonics have good wavelength coverage, potentially spanning the entire EUV from a few to a hundred nanometers. Our instrument is configured to measure reflectances from 14 to 30 nm and has similar to 180 spectral resolution (lambda/Delta lambda). The reflection from a sample surface can be measured over a continuous range of incident angles (5 degrees-75 degrees). A secondary 14 cm gas cell attenuates the harmonics in a controlled way to keep signals within the linear dynamic range of the detector, comprised of a microchannel plate coupled to a phosphorous screen and charge coupled device camera. The harmonics are produced using similar to 10 mJ, similar to 35 fs, and similar to 800 nm laser pulses with a repetition rate of 10 Hz. Per-shot energy monitoring of the laser discriminates against fluctuations. The polarimeter reflectance data agree well with data obtained at the Advanced Light Source Synchrotron (Beamline 6.3.2).