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Abstract

In atomic and molecular physics experiments extremely short laser pulses, mostly in the sub ten-femtosecond range, are of strong interest. The shorter the pulses are and correspondingly, with growing bandwidth, the more important dispersion control and management becomes. In this diploma thesis a new setup for spectral broadening involving self phase modulation via lamentation and subsequent recompression is presented. Moreover pulse characterization through a dedicated interferometric autocorrelation setup with nearly zero dispersion has been achieved. The initial pulses reveal a duration of 32 fs at a repetition rate of 8000 Hz and a single pulse energy of about 1 mJ. An extensive investigation of important quantities, in uencing the lamentation process, like pressure, focussing parameters and the interaction length was performed. Their optimization yielded a broadening of the fundamental spectra of about a factor of 5 supporting lightpulses down to a fourierlimited duration of 4 fs with 1.5 optical cycles. These values, as well as the appearance of smaller pre- and postpulse structures were con rmed by autocorrelation measurements of the pulses. Even though the full reconstruction of the time dependent electric eld of the pulses is impossible via autocorrelation, one can retrieve quantitative information about the pulse chirp by simulating the complete autocorrelation signal, including the second-order dispersion parameter.