Intense XUV pulses from a compact HHG setup using a single harmonic

We report on a compact and spectrally intense extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) source, which is based on high-harmonic generation (HHG) driven by 395 nm pulses. In order to minimize the XUV virtual source size and to maximize the XUV flux, HHG is performed several Rayleigh lengths away from the driving laser focal plane in a high-density gas jet. As a result, a high focused XUV intensity of 5 × 1013 W cm−2 is achieved, using a beamline with a length of only two meters and a modest driving laser pulse energy of 3 mJ. The high XUV intensity is demonstrated by performing a nonlinear ionization experiment in argon, using an XUV spectrum that is dominated by a single harmonic at 22 eV. Ion charge states up to Ar3+ are observed, which requires the absorption of at least four XUV photons. The high XUV intensity and the narrow bandwidth are ideally suited for a variety of applications including photoelectron spectroscopy, the coherent control of resonant transitions and the imaging of nanoscale structures

Attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy without inversion symmetry

Transient absorption is a very powerful observable in attosecond experiments on atoms, molecules and solids and is frequently used in experiments employing phase-locked few-cycle infrared and XUV laser pulses derived from high harmonic generation. We show numerically and analytically that in non-centrosymmetric systems, such as many polyatomic molecules, which-way interference enabled by the lack of parity conservation leads to new spectral absorption features, which directly reveal the laser electric field. The extension of attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy (ATAS) to such targets hence becomes sensitive to global and local inversion symmetry. We anticipate that ATAS will find new applications in non-centrosymmetric systems, in which the carrier-to-envelope phase of the infrared pulse becomes a relevant parameter and in which the orientation of the sample and the electronic symmetry of the molecule can be addressed

Low-Energy Structures in Strong Field Ionization Revealed by Quantum Orbits

Experiments on atoms in intense laser pulses and the corresponding exact ab initio solutions of the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation (TDSE) yield photoelectron spectra with low-energy features that are not reproduced by the otherwise successful work horse of strong field laser physics: the "strong field approximation" (SFA). In the semi-classical limit, the SFA possesses an appealing interpretation in terms of interfering quantum trajectories. It is shown that a conceptually simple extension towards the inclusion of Coulomb effects yields very good agreement with exact TDSE results. Moreover, the Coulomb quantum orbits allow for a physically intuitive interpretation and detailed analysis of all low-energy features in the semi-classical regime, in particular the recently discovered "low-energy structure" [C.I. Blaga et al., Nature Physics 5, 335 (2009) and W. Quan et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 093001 (2009)].Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, REVTe

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

Attosecond control of electron dynamics in carbon monoxide

Laser pulses with stable electric field waveforms establish the opportunity to achieve coherent control on attosecond timescales. We present experimental and theoretical results on the steering of electronic motion in a multi-electron system. A very high degree of light-waveform control over the directional emission of C+ and O+ fragments from the dissociative ionization of CO was observed. Ab initio based model calculations reveal contributions to the control related to the ionization and laser-induced population transfer between excited electronic states of CO+ during dissociation

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

Rare-Gas Clusters in Intense Extreme-Ultraviolet Pulses from a High-Order Harmonic Source

We report evidence for two previously unidentified effects in the ionization of rare-gas clusters by intense extreme-ultraviolet pulses. First, electron spectra indicate multistep photoemission with increasing isotropy for larger clusters due to electron-atom collisions. Second, very slow (meV) electrons are interpreted as the first experimental evidence for Rydberg-like atomic state formation in the nanoplasma expansion. Only small fractions of Xe2+ ions were found, in sharp contrast to previous results recorded under comparable conditions [Murphy et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 203401 (2008)]