Kerr spatiotemporal self-focusing in a planar glass waveguide - art. no. 043902

We observed simultaneous focusing in both space and time for light pulses p ropagating in a planar waveguide. In particular, 60 fs pulses with a width of 170 mum were injected into a planar glass waveguide in the anomalous dis persion regime. Output pulses as short as 30 fs and as narrow as 20 mum wer e measured. The results suggest that multiphoton absorption and intrapulse stimulated Raman scattering arrest the spatiotemporal contraction. The resu lts were compared to the pulse evolution in zero and normal dispersion regi mes and were shown to be significantly different. All of the experimental r esults were reproduced by a numerical model.