The quantum mechanical motion of electrons in molecules and solids occurs on the sub-femtosecond timescale. Consequently, the study of ultrafast electronic phenomena requires the generation of laser pulses shorter than 1 fs and of sufficient intensity to interact with their target with high probability.Probing these dynamics with atomic-site specificity requires the extension of sub-femtosecond pulses to the soft X-ray spectral region. Here we report the generation of isolated GW-scale soft X-ray attosecond pulses with an X-ray free-electron laser. Our source has a pulse energy that is six orders of magnitude larger than any other source of isolated attosecond pulses in the soft X-ray spectral region, with a peak power in the tens of gigawatts. This unique combination of high intensity, high photon energy and short pulse duration enables the investigation of electron dynamics with X-ray non-linear spectroscopy and single-particle imaging.their assistance in designing, constructing and installing the XLEAP wiggler. We also acknowledge the SLAC Accelerator Operations group, and the Mechanical and Electrical engineering divisions of the SLAC Accelerator Directorate, especially

Optically active spin defects in wide-bandgap materials have many potential applications in quantum information and quantum sensing. Spin defects in two-dimensional layered van der Waals materials are just emerging to be investigated. Here we demonstrate that optically addressable spin ensembles in hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) can be generated by femtosecond laser irradiation. We observe optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) of hBN spin defects created by laser irradiation. We show that the creation of spin defects in hBN is strongly affected by the pulse energy of the femtosecond laser. When the laser pulse number is less than a few thousand, the pulse number only affects the density of the defects but not the type of defects. With proper laser parameters, spin defects can be generated with a high probability of success. Our work provides a convenient way to create spin defects in hBN by femtosecond laser writing, which shows promising prospects for quantum technologies.

The recent demonstration of isolated attosecond pulses from an X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) opens the possibility for probing ultrafast electron dynamics at X-ray wavelengths.An established experimental method for probing ultrafast dynamics is X-ray transient absorption spectroscopy, where the X-ray absorption spectrum is measured by scanning the central photon energy and recording the resultant photoproducts. The spectral bandwidth inherent to attosecond pulses is wide compared to the resonant features typically probed, which generally precludes the application of this technique in the attosecond regime. In this paper we propose and demonstrate a new technique to conduct transient absorption spectroscopy with broad bandwidth attosecond pulses with the aid of ghost imaging, recovering sub-bandwidth resolution in photoproduct-based absorption measurements.

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