Ji-Cai Liu

Optical limiting for microsecond pulses

We present a dynamical theory of nonlinear absorption and propagation of laser pulses with duration in the microsecond time domain. The general theory is applied to fullerene C(60) because of its good optical limiting properties, namely, a rather low ground state absorption and a strong triplet-triplet absorption. It is shown that sequential absorption involving strong triplet-triplet transitions is the major mechanism of nonlinear absorption. The intrinsic hierarchy of time scales makes an adiabatic solution of the coupled rate equations valid, which therefore can be reduced to a single dynamical equation for the ground state population. The slow evolution of this population is defined by an effective rate of population transfer to the triplet state and by the pulse duration. The propagation effect plays an important role in the optical power limiting performance. The intensity of the field as well as the population of the triplet state decreases during the pulse propagation, and a weakened nonlinear sequential two-photon absorption is followed by a linear one-photon absorption which gradually becomes the dominating process. The competition between these qualitatively different processes depends on the field intensity, the length of the absorber, and the concentration. The pulse propagation is studied by solving numerically the two-dimensional paraxial field equation together with the effective rate equation for the ground state population.

Slowdown and compression of a strong X-ray free-electron pulse propagating through the Mg vapors

Here we study the propagation of a strong X-ray free-electron pulse through the resonant medium of atomic Mg accompanied by the self-seeded stimulated resonant X-ray Raman scattering. The X-ray pul ...

The propagation of a strong x-ray pulse followed by pulse slowdown and compression, amplified spontaneous emission and lasing without inversion

We study self-seeded stimulated resonant x-ray Raman scattering and show a 20-fold compression of the strong XFEL pulse propagating through the resonant medium of atomic argon with the frequency (2 ...

X-ray absorption of N2 accompanied by infrared-induced transitions between the ungerade and gerade core levels

We study a two-colour pump–probe scheme of x-ray absorption accompanied by core-hole hopping in the field of a strong IR laser. The process is exemplified for fixed-in-space and randomly oriented homonuclear diatomic molecules N2 near the 1σu → 1πg x-ray absorption transition. The laser field mixes the core holes of opposite parities and causes Rabi splitting of the core-excited states. The IR field results in spectral broadening and shifts of the x-ray resonances as well as decrease of x-ray photoabsorption. The Stark broadening of the x-ray absorption spectrum depends on the orientation of the molecule and the angle between the polarization vectors of the x-ray and IR fields. The spectral changes caused by the IR field are weaker for randomly oriented molecules in comparison with fixed-in-space molecules.