Challenges and limitations on generating few cycle laser pulses directly from oscillators

Sub-two-cycle optical pulses with bandwidths in excess of 500 nm have been generated directly from a Ti:sapphire laser using double-chirped mirror pairs and exploiting dispersion-managed soliton formation in the cavity. For the first time sub-two-cycle pulses directly from the laser are generated with broad enough spectra to detect and control the evolution of the phase between carrier and envelope using interference between second and third harmonic of the fundamental spectrum.