We produce minimally disruptive breakdown in water by using tightly focused 100-fs laser pulses and demonstrate the potential use of this technique in microsurgery of the eye. Using time-resolved imaging and piezoelectric pressure detection, we measure the magnitude and speed of propagation of the pressure wave produced in the breakdown. Compared with breakdown with longer pulses, here there is a much lower energy threshold for breakdown of 0.2 mJ , a smaller shock zone diameter (11 mm for 1-mJ pulses), and consistent energy deposition.

We have used a commercially available liquid-crystal spatial light modulator within a reflective optics pulse-shaping apparatus to shape ultrashort pulses with temporal resolution approaching 10 fs. Using the spatial light modulator as a phase modulator, we produce a variety of complex ultrafast waveforms, including odd pulses, high repetition rate (.23 THz) pulse trains, and asymmetric pulse trains. We also show that it is possible to compensate for large amounts of high-order phase dispersion (in excess of 60p) by appropriate cubic- and quartic-phase modulations of the pulse. Finally, we examine the limitations of shaping ultrabroad-bandwidth pulses. We find that, for specific classes of waveforms, Fourier-transform pulse-shaping techniques can be used for pulses with 5-fs durations, which exceed the current state of the art in ultrashort pulse generation. However, synthesis of general waveforms with 5-fs resolution will require compensating for nonlinear spatial dispersion of frequency in the masking plane.