UV-pump IR-probe Spectroscopy of Molecules with Time-Resolution reaching the 10-fs Range Kyriaki Kosma München 2008 UV-pump IR-probe Spectroscopy of Molecules with Time-Resolution reaching the 10-fs Range Kyriaki Kosma Dissertation an der Fakultät für Physik der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München vorgelegt von Kyriaki Kosma aus Thessaloniki, Griechenland München, 15 Juli 2008 Erstgutachter: Ferenc Krausz Zweitgutachter: Wolfgang Domcke Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 11-11-2008 Contents iContents Abstract iv Introduction viii 1. Interaction of atoms with intense laser fields 1 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 Non-linear interaction of light with matter 2 1.2.1 The optical Kerr effect 3 1.2.2 Self-phase modulation 5 1.2.3 Material dispersion and devices for pulse compression 8 1.2.4 Self-focusing 10 1.2.5 Harmonic generation 13 1.3 Temporal characterization of femtosecond pulses 14 2 Ultrashort pulse generation in the IR and UV/VUV region 16 2.1 Experimental set-up 16 2.2 Supercontinuum generation 17 2.3 Characterization of the supercontinuum radiation 19 2.3.