Single cycle thin film compressor opening the door to Zepto-second-Exawatt physics

This article demonstrates a new compression scheme that has the potential to compress a high energy pulse as high as a few hundred Joules in a pulse as short as one optical cycle at 0.8 μm producing a true ultra-relativistic λ3 pulse. This pulse would have a focused intensity of 1024 W/cm2 or a0 of 1000. On interaction with a solid target, this pulse could form an efficient, 10%, relativistic mirror that could further compress the pulse to the atto-zepto-second regime, with an up-shifted wavelength of 1-10 keV. This technique could be a watershed enabling the compression of peta-watt pulses into the exa-watt and zepto-second regime possible. (authors)