Femtosecond Cascaded Second-Order Nonlinearities in Quasi-Phase-Matching Devices

Abstract

Cascaded processes of energy exchanges between optical beams via second-order nonlinearities lead to various phenomena, including Kerr-like nonlinear phase shifts and optical solitons. The cascading nonlinearity, combined with the developments in quasi-phase-matching devices, is becoming more promising for all-optical signal processing and ultrashort pulse generation. Here we review the basic properties of the cascading nonlinearity and present our recent experiments on femtosecond cascading with quasi-phase-matching devices.