Khokhlov was born in the family of political officer and graduate of the
Moscow Energetic Institute Viktor Khristoforovich Khokhlov and physicist Maria Yakovlevna. He graduated from a seven-year school in 1941 and worked in a car workshop during the
Great Patriotic War. In 1944, he externally passed exams in high school and began to study at the
Moscow Aviation Institute. In 1945, he moved to the Physics department at
Moscow State University, where he spent his whole life. After graduating from university in 1948, he entered graduate school at the Department of Oscillation Physics. In 1952 he defended his thesis with the title of candidate of physical and mathematical sciences(PhD). With his investigations into vibrational physics he belonged to the third generation of the vibration physics school of
Leonid I. Mandelstam and
Nikolai D. Papaleksi. In 1959, he was sent to a one-year study visit to the
United States at
Stanford University. In 1962 he was awarded a doctorate (habilitation) in doctoral studies. Khokhlov organized together with
S. A. Akhmanov, the first laboratory for
nonlinear optics of the
Soviet Union at the Lomonosov Moscow State University. == Selected publications ==