Carrier-envelope phase effects on the strong-field photoemission of electrons from metallic nanostructures

Sharp metallic nanotapers irradiated with few-cycle laser pulses are emerging as a source of highly confined coherent electron wavepackets with attosecond duration and strong directivity. The possibility to steer, control or switch such electron wavepackets by light is expected to pave the way towards direct visualization of nanoplasmonic field dynamics and real-time probing of electron motion in solid state nanostructures. Such pulses can be generated by strong-field induced tunneling and acceleration of electrons in the near-field of sharp gold tapers within one half-cycle of the driving laser field. Here, we show the effect of the carrier-envelope phase of the laser field on the generation and motion of strong-field emitted electrons from such tips. This is a step forward towards controlling the coherent electron motion in and around metallic nanostructures on ultrashort length and time scales

Macroscopic studies of short-pulse high-order harmonic generation using the time-dependent Schrodinger equation

We consider high harmonic generation by ultrashort (27-108 fs) laser pulses and calculate the macroscopic response of a collection of atoms to such a short pulse. We show how the harmonic spectrum after propagation through the medium is significantly different from the single-atom spectrum. We use single-atom data calculated by integration of the time-dependent Schrodinger equation and propose a method, based on an adiabatic approximation;:to extract the data necessary to perform a propagation calculation

Yield and temporal characterization of high-order harmonics from intense midinfrared excitation of a cesium vapor

Cesium vapor produced high harmonic radiation in the visible/UV spectral range when interacting with a tightly focused, intense midinfrared source. It was found that the measured yields of harmonic orders 9-17 yielded quantitative agreement with numerical simulations. Using an autocorrelation method, the 5th-9th harmonic orders were generated with sufficient pulse energies for direct temporal measurements. The cause of the spectral broadening was found to be a blueshift connected to a strong time-dependent ionization