The lecture gives an overview on different techniques for the generation, amplification and the characterization of ultrashort pulses, i.e. optical pulses with a pulse length shorter than a few picoseconds. These pulses have gained much interest in recent years, as they allow the time-resolved observation of many different processes, e.g. the vibration of molecules, the dynamics within solids, the breaking and formation of chemical bonds, and very recently, the release of a single electron from an atom. Some of these applications will be discussed in the lecture.

Another interesting feature of short pulses that will be discussed in the lecture is their enormous bandwidth, which for a visible pulse of a few femtoseconds length spans a few ten nanometers. This lead, among other, to the development of optical frequency combs, which allows the precise measurement of (absolute) frequencies by bridging the gap from the cesium clock transition to the visible/UV regime. The broad bandwidth also allows for the shaping of the pulses, which has become a widely used tool in physical chemistry.

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