Degenerate cross-phase modulation for pulse compression and amplification of ultrashort laser pulses

Temporal and spectral profiles of a linearly polarized ultrashort laser pulse modulated by a copropagating perpendicularly polarized strong laser pulse with the same frequency in condensed matter have been modeled. Degenerate cross-phase modulation can be applied to femtosecond optical pulse compression and amplification without the use of gratings or prisms and to signal processing owing to the small walk-off and the degenerate four-wave mixing between the pump and probe pulses. In a double pump compression case, the pulse duration of the probe pulse has been reduced by a factor of 15 with the energy gain of over fourfold. This result gives a power gain of 60-fold.