Sub-femtosecond X-ray pulse generation and measurement

Kienberger R, Hentschel M, Spielmann C, et al. Sub-femtosecond X-ray pulse generation and measurement. In: Applied Physics B. APPLIED PHYSICS B-LASERS AND OPTICS. Vol 74. SPRINGER-VERLAG; 2002: S3-S9.We report the generation and measurement of isolated soft-X-ray pulses (lambda(X) = 14 nm) with a duration of tau(X) = 650 150 attoseconds (as) by using few-cycle intense visible/near-infrared (lambda(0) = 750 nm) laser pulses. For the temporal characterization of the X-ray pulses, a cross-correlation technique relying on laser field assisted X-ray photoemission from krypton atoms was employed. The experimental results bear direct evidence of the X-ray pulse being synchronized to the field oscillations of the visible-light pulse with attosecond precision and of bound-free electronic transitions from the 4p state of krypton responding to 90-eV excitation on an attosecond time scale. As a first demonstration of attosecond metrology, the synchronized single sub-fs X-ray pulses were used for tracing the electric field oscillations in a visible-light wave with a resolution of better than 150 as

Steering attosecond electron wave packets with light

Kienberger R, Hentschel M, Uiberacker M, et al. Steering attosecond electron wave packets with light. SCIENCE. 2002;297(5584):1144-1148.Photoelectrons excited by extreme ultraviolet or x-ray photons in the presence of a strong laser field generally suffer a spread of their energies due to the absorption and emission of laser photons. We demonstrate that if the emitted electron wave packet is temporally confined to a small fraction of the oscillation period of the interacting light wave, its energy spectrum can be up- or down-shifted by many times the laser photon energy without substantial broadening. The light wave can accelerate or decelerate the electrons drift velocity, i.e., steer the electron wave packet like a classical particle. This capability strictly relies on a sub-femtosecond duration of the ionizing x-ray pulse and on its timing to the phase of the light wave with a similar accuracy, offering a simple and potentially single-shot diagnostic tool for attosecond pump-probe spectroscopy

The generation, characterization and applications of broadband isolated attosecond pulses

The generation of extremely short isolated attosecond pulses requires both a broad spectral bandwidth and control of the spectral phase. Rapid progress has been made in both aspects, leading to the generation of light pulses as short as 67 as in 2012, and broadband attosecond continua covering a wide range of extreme ultraviolet and soft X-ray wavelengths. Such pulses have been successfully applied in photoelectron and photoion spectroscopy and recently developed attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy to study electron dynamics in matter. In this Review, we discuss significant recent advances in the generation, characterization and applications of ultrabroadband, isolated attosecond pulses with spectral bandwidths comparable to the central frequency. These pulses can in principle be compressed to a single optical cycle. © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited

Nonlinear Optics

This chapter provides a brief introduction into the basic nonlinear-optical phenomena and discusses some of the most significant recent advances and breakthroughs in nonlinear optics, as well as novel applications of nonlinear-optical processes and devices. Nonlinear optics is the area of optics that studies the interaction of light with matter in the regime where the response of the material system to the applied electromagnetic field is nonlinear in the amplitude of this field. At low light intensities, typical of non-laser sources, the properties of materials remain independent of the intensity of illumination. The superposition principle holds true in this regime, and light waves can pass through materials or be reflected from boundaries and interfaces without interacting with each other. Laser sources, on the other hand, can provide sufficiently high light intensities to modify the optical properties of materials. Light waves can then interact with each other, exchanging momentum and energy, and the superposition principle is no longer valid. This interaction of light waves can result in the generation of optical fields at new frequencies, including optical harmonics of incident radiation or sum- or difference-frequency signals