| Abstract | In a few-cycle laser pulse, the peak field strength depends on the carrier envelope phase. Concurrently, coherent control requires the measurement and manipulation of the spectral phase of a light pulse to influence a dynamical process that has multiple interfering pathways. Here, we exploit the interference of second harmonic generation and self-phase modulation in an 80 μm thick quartz plate due to a two-cycle pulse centered at 1.8 μm with peak intensity 3×10^13 W/cm^2 to generate half-cycle electric field transients. In a monolithic step, we transform a measurement of the carrier envelope phase to the control over the pulse evolution with subcycle temporal accuracy. The high-intensity subcycle transient is scalable in pulse energy and will be useful for strong field physics and attosecond science: the ultrashort infrared pulse can generate isolated attosecond pulses from low bandgap semiconductor materials, and will be able to optically control currents on a subfemtosecond timescale. |
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