Half-cycle electromagnetic pulses and pulse electric area

Abstract

Recent progress in the generation of attosecond optical pulses raises the question of the limits of pulse duration reduction. Such pulses are needed to penetrate and control the world of intra-atomic and potentially intra-nuclear processes, radically increase the productivity of information transmission and processing and for other applications. The pulse duration is inversely proportional to the width of the pulse spectrum. When the possibilities for the width expansion are exhausted, the duration can be reduced by reducing the number of field cycles in the pulse. Extremely short pulses are half-cycle and unipolar. They have a more effective, unidirectional effect on electrical charges of the same sign. Experiments show the half-cycle pulses in the terahertz region of the spectrum; ways to obtain them in the optical region are discussed. The unusual properties of half-cycle pulses require the use of strict Maxwell equations.