Nonlinear optical effects in a nucleus

Intense laser technologies generate light with unprecedented and growing intensities. The possibility emerges that a nucleus responds nonlinearly to an intense light field, pointing to a yet little explored research area of nuclear nonlinear optics. We consider two-photon and three-photon absorption (with subsequent disintegration) processes of the deuteron, the simplest and the most fundamental nontrivial nucleus, as prototypes of nuclear...