Spatio-temporal characterisation of a 100 kHz 24 W sub-3-cycle NOPCPA laser system

In recent years, OPCPA and NOPCPA laser systems have shown the potential to supersede Ti:sapphire plus post-compression based laser systems to drive next generation attosecond light sources via direct amplification of few-cycle pulses to high pulse energies at high repetition rates. In this paper, we present a sub 3-cycle, 100 kHz, 24 W NOPA laser system and characterise its spatio-temporal properties using the SEA-F-SPIDER technique. Our results underline the importance of spatio-temporal diagnostics for these emerging laser systems

Criteria for the observation of strong-field photoelectron holography

Photoelectron holography is studied experimentally and computationally using the ionization of ground-state xenon atoms by intense near-infrared radiation. A strong dependence of the occurrence of the holographic pattern on the laser wavelength and intensity is observed, and it is shown that the observation of the hologram requires that the ponderomotive energy Up is substantially larger than the photon energy. The holographic interference is therefore favored by longer wavelengths and higher laser intensities. Our results indicate that the tunneling regime is not a necessary condition for the observation of the holographic pattern, which can be observed under the conditions formally attributed to the multiphoton regime. © 2011 American Physical Society

Attosecond time-resolved photoelectron holography

Ultrafast strong-field physics provides insight into quantum phenomena that evolve on an attosecond time scale, the most fundamental of which is quantum tunneling. The tunneling process initiates a range of strong field phenomena such as high harmonic generation (HHG), laser-induced electron diffraction, double ionization and photoelectron holography—all evolving during a fraction of the optical cycle. Here we apply attosecond photoelectron holography as a method to resolve the temporal properties of the tunneling process. Adding a weak second harmonic (SH) field to a strong fundamental laser field enables us to reconstruct the ionization times of photoelectrons that play a role in the formation of a photoelectron hologram with attosecond precision. We decouple the contributions of the two arms of the hologram and resolve the subtle differences in their ionization times, separated by only a few tens of attoseconds

Phase cycling of extreme ultraviolet pulse sequences generated in rare gases

The development of schemes for coherent nonlinear time-domain spectroscopy in the extreme-ultraviolet regime (XUV) has so far been impeded by experimental difficulties that arise at these short wavelengths. In this work we present a novel experimental approach, which facilitates the timing control and phase cycling of XUV pulse sequences produced by harmonic generation in rare gases. The method is demonstrated for the generation and high spectral resolution characterization of narrow-bandwidth harmonics (˜14 eV) in argon and krypton. Our technique simultaneously provides high phase stability and a pathway-selective detection scheme for nonlinear signals - both necessary prerequisites for all types of coherent nonlinear spectroscopy. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd on behalf of the Institute of Physics and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft

Femtosecond XUV induced dynamics of the methyl iodide cation

Ultrashort XUV wavelength-selected pulses obtained with high harmonic generation are used to study the dynamics of molecular cations with state-to-state resolution. We demonstrate this by XUV pump - IR probe experiments on CH3I+ cations and identify both resonant and non-resonant dynamics

Retrieval of attosecond pulse ensembles from streaking experiments using mixed state time-domain ptychography

The electric field of attosecond laser pulses can be retrieved from laser-dressed photoionisation measurements, where electron wavepackets that result from single-photon ionisation by the attosecond pulse in the presence of a dressing field are produced. In case of fluctuating dressing laser and/or attosecond pulses, e.g. due to pulse-to-pulse fluctuations of the carrier envelope phase of the infrared laser pulse, commonly applied retrieval algorithms result in the erroneous extraction of the pulse fields. We present a mixed state time-domain ptychography algorithm for the retrieval of pulse ensembles from attosecond streaking experiments. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd

Population transfer to high angular momentum states in infrared-assisted XUV photoionization of helium

An extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) laser pulse consisting of harmonics of a fundamental near-infrared (NIR) laser frequency is combined with the NIR pulse to systematically study two-color photoionization of helium atoms. A time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy experiment is carried out where energy- A nd angle-resolved photoelectron distributions are obtained as a function of the NIR intensity and wavelength. Time-dependent Schrödinger equation calculations are performed for the conditions corresponding to the experiment and used to extract residual populations of Rydberg states resulting from excitation by the XUV + NIR pulse pair. The residual populations are studied as a function of the NIR intensity (3.5 × 1010-8 × 1012 W cm-2) and wavelength (760-820 nm). The evolution of the photoelectron distribution and the residual populations are interpreted using an effective restricted basis model, which includes the minimum set of states relevant to the features observed in the experiments. As a result, a comprehensive and intuitive picture of the laser-induced dynamics in helium atoms exposed to a two-color XUV-NIR light field is obtained. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd

Generation and characterisation of few-pulse attosecond pulse trains at 100 kHz repetition rate

The development of attosecond pump-probe experiments at high repetition rate requires the development of novel attosecond sources maintaining a sufficient number of photons per pulse. We use 7 fs, 800 nm pulses from a non-collinear optical parametric chirped pulse amplification laser system to generate few-pulse attosecond pulse trains (APTs) with a flux of >106 photons per shot in the extreme ultraviolet at a repetition rate of 100 kHz. The pulse trains have been fully characterised by recording frequency-resolved optical gating for complete reconstruction of attosecond bursts (FROG-CRAB) traces with a velocity map imaging spectrometer. For the pulse retrieval from the FROG-CRAB trace a new ensemble retrieval algorithm has been employed that enables the reconstruction of the shape of the APTs in the presence of carrier envelope phase fluctuations of the few-cycle laser system. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd