Intrinsic chirp of single-cycle pulses

The Fourier transform-limited electromagnetic pulse has been regarded to be free of chirps for a long time. This is no longer true if the pulse duration goes down to or less than one optical cycle. We report the experimental observation of intrinsic chirps in such pulses with the sub-single-cycle terahertz (THz) waveforms obtained with a standard THz time-domain spectroscopy system. The results confirm the break down of the carrier-envelope (CE) expression for single-cycle optical pulses, and may influence the experimental measurements and theoretical modeling with single-cycle pulses.