Subcycle spatiotemporal compression of infrared pulses in χ⁽2⁾ semiconductors

Using a full-field propagator model, we report on the emergence of highly localized, subcycle solitonic structures for few-cycle long-wave-infrared (LWIR) pulses propagating through optical semiconductor materials with efficient quadratic nonlinearities and broad anomalous transmission windows. We briefly discuss the theoretical basis for the observed spatiotemporal carrier-wave dynamics and compare it to simulations of a weakly perturbed pulse’s propagation through two currently grown, low-loss IR semiconductor crystals.