Circularly polarized light in the single-cycle limit: The nature of highly polychromatic radiation of defined polarization

We have developed a general analytic description of polarized light pulses and explored the properties of circularly polarized single-cycle pulses. The temporal evolution of the electric-field vector of such spectrally broad pulses, which may be described in terms of a Hilbert transform relationship, differs significantly from the well-known behavior of quasi- monochromatic radiation. Single-cycle circularly polarized pulses have been produced and characterized experimentally in the terahertz spectral region.