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Optics enters the single-cycle regime Physicists at Stanford University in the US have produced the shortest ever laser pulse at optical frequencies. The pulse lasts for just 1.6 femtoseconds, which corresponds to just 0.8 of an optical cycle for pulses with a central wavelength of 650 nanometres (M Y Shverdin et al. 2005 Phys. Rev. Lett. 94 033904).
Stephen Harris and colleagues started by shining YAG and Ti:Sapphire laser beams into a cell containing deuterium gas. This produced a set of "sidebands" at wavelengths between 2.
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