Photoemission spectroscopy is central to understanding the inner workings of condensed matter, from simple metals and semiconductors to complex materials such as Mott insulators and superconductors. Most state-of-the-art knowledge about such solids stems from spectroscopic investigations, and use of subfemtosecond light pulses can provide a time-domain perspective. For example, attosecond (10 seconds) metrology allows electron wave packet creation, transport and scattering to be followed on atomic length scales and on attosecond timescales. However, previous studies could not disclose the duration of these processes, because the arrival time of the photons was not known with attosecond precision. Here we show that this main source of ambiguity can be overcome by introducing the atomic chronoscope method, which references all measured timings to the moment of light-pulse arrival and therefore provides absolute timing of the processes under scrutiny. Our proof-of-principle experiment reveals that photoemission from the tungsten conduction band can proceed faster than previously anticipated. By contrast, the duration of electron emanation from core states is correctly described by semiclassical modelling. These findings highlight the necessity of treating the origin, initial excitation and transport of electrons in advanced modelling of the attosecond response of solids, and our absolute data provide a benchmark. Starting from a robustly characterized surface, we then extend attosecond spectroscopy towards isolating the emission properties of atomic adsorbates on surfaces and demonstrate that these act as photoemitters with instantaneous response. We also find that the tungsten core-electron timing remains unchanged by the adsorption of less than one monolayer of dielectric atoms, providing a starting point for the exploration of excitation and charge migration in technologically and biologically relevant adsorbate systems.

We propose a high-speed projection system that is able to project statistical speckle patterns at a rate of 500Hz. Its purpose is to generate structured light for a real-time photogrammetry stereo vision setup. As conventional digital light projector (DLP) projection setups are limited in their maximum projection rate to 250Hz for gray-value patterns, stripe projection systems are usually applied for real-time three-dimensional (3D) measurements. However, these techniques can only be used on steady surfaces as phase unwrapping has to be done. In contrast, the proposed setup is able to measure the shape of multiple spatially separated objects at once. We compare the speckle setup with a system using a DLP projector and with other fast 3D shape measurement setups, like the widely used stripe projection methods, qualitatively and quantitatively.

Many three-dimensional (3D) shape measurement techniques in stereophotogrammetry with temporal coded structured illumination are limited to static scenes because the time for measurement is too long in comparison to the object speed. The measurement of moving objects result in erroneous reconstructions. This is apparent to reduce measurement time to overcome this limitation, which is often done by increasing the projection rate for illumination while shrinking the amount of images taken for reconstruction. The projection rate limits most applications in its speed because digital light processing (DLP) projectors, which are widely used, bring a limited projection rate along. Our approach, in contrast, does not take a DLP. Instead we use laser speckles as projected patterns which are switched using an acousto-optical deflector. The projection rate is 10× higher than what the fastest stripe projection systems to our knowledge achieve. Hence, we present this uncommon but potential approach for highspeed (≈250 3Dfps= [3D measurements per second]), dense, and accurate 3D measurements of spatially separated objects and show the media that emphasizes the ability of accurate measurements while the objects under testing move.

Recent advances in the development of attosecond soft x-ray sources toward photon wavelengths below 10 nm are also driving the development of suited broadband multilayer optics for steering and shaping attosecond pulses. We demonstrate that current attosecond experiments in the sub-200-eV range benefit from these improved optics. We present our achievements in utilizing ion-beam-deposited chromium/scandium (Cr/Sc) multilayer mirrors, optimized by tailored material dependent deposition and interface polishing, for the generation of single attosecond pulses from a high-harmonic cut-off spectrum at a central energy of 145 eV. Isolated attosecond pulses have been measured by soft x-ray-pump/NIR-probe electron streaking experiments and characterized using frequency-resolved optical gating for complete reconstruction of attosecond bursts (FROG/CRAB). The results demonstrate that Cr/Sc multilayer mirrors can be used as efficient attosecond optics for reflecting 600-attosecond pulses at a photon energy of 145 eV, which is a prerequisite for present and future attosecond experiments in this energy range.