Super-resonant radiation stimulated by high-harmonics

Abstract

Solitons propagating in media with higher order dispersion will shed radiation known as dispersive wave or resonant radiation, with applications in frequency broadening, deep UV sources for spectroscopy or simply fundamental studies of soliton physics. Starting from a recently proposed equation that models the behaviour of ultrashort optical pulses in nonlinear materials using the analytic signal, we find that the resonant radiation associated with the third-harmonic generation term of the equation is parametrically stimulated with an unprecedented gain. Resonant radiation levels, typically only a small fraction of the soliton, are now as intense as the soliton itself. The mechanism is quite universal and works also in normal dispersion and with harmonics higher than the third. We report experimental hints of this super-resonant radiation stimulated by the fifth harmonic in diamond.