
Let there be a white light The decomposition of white light into its spectral components was first studied by Newton. Three centuries since this revolutionary discovery, ultrashort laser pulses and nonlinear optics have made it possible to produce artificial white light with controlled time duration. New research focuses on intense ultrashort laser pulses propagating in transparent media and giving rise to nonlinear optics phenomena: ultra-broadening of the original spectrum, spanning from the visible to the infrared. The resulting light is called the white light continuum or supercontinuum. This spectacular nonlinear phenomenon raises much interest for its wide applications: the most straightforward application replaces the common white light sources used in many characterization setups like interferometer-based dispersion measurements, nonlinear spectroscopy, and microscopy. The more specialized white light continuum sources are tunable laser sources, pump-probe spectr...