Attosecond sampling of arbitrary optical waveforms

Wyatt,; Witting, Tobias; Schiavi, Andrea; Fabris, Davide; Marangos, J. P.; Tisch, J. W. G.; Walmsley, Ian A.

doi:10.1364/optica.3.000303

Cited by 43 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…As a result, interferometry with high harmonics found important applications in e.g. Molecular Orbital Tomography [13], in wavefront reconstruction [14] and electric field characterization [15] of high harmonics. Recently, interferometry with high harmonics provided added value to coherent diffractive imaging (CDI) [16,17] using the full high harmonics bandwidth and photon flux.…”

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confidence: 99%

Spatially resolved Fourier transform spectroscopy in the extreme ultraviolet

Jansen

Rudolf

Freisem

et al. 2016

Optica

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Coherent extreme ultraviolet (XUV) radiation produced by table-top high-harmonic generation (HHG) sources provides a wealth of possibilities in research areas ranging from attosecond physics to high resolution coherent diffractive imaging. However, it remains challenging to fully exploit the coherence of such sources for interferometry and Fourier transform spectroscopy (FTS). This is due to the need for a measurement system that is stable at the level of a wavelength fraction, yet allowing a controlled scanning of time delays. Here we demonstrate XUV interferometry and FTS in the 17-55 nm wavelength range using an ultrastable common-path interferometer suitable for high-intensity laser pulses that drive the HHG process. This approach enables the generation of fully coherent XUV pulse pairs with sub-attosecond timing variation, tunable time delay and a clean Gaussian spatial mode profile. We demonstrate the capabilities of our XUV interferometer by performing spatially resolved FTS on a thin film composed of titanium and silicon nitride.A well-known feature of high-harmonic generation (HHG) is broadband spectra in the XUV and soft X-ray regions [1][2][3]. This radiation is typically emitted in a train of attosecond pulses with excellent spatial and temporal coherence, as shown in various interferometric and spectroscopic measurements [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. As a result, interferometry with high harmonics found important applications in e.g. Molecular Orbital Tomography [13], in wavefront reconstruction [14] and electric field characterization [15] of high harmonics. Recently, interferometry with high harmonics provided added value to coherent diffractive imaging (CDI) [16,17] using the full high harmonics bandwidth and photon flux. However, in the extreme ultraviolet (XUV) spectral range, interferometry and Fourier transform spectroscopy (FTS) are challenging due to the high stability requirements of the interferometer itself. Two main types of HHG interferometers have been devised. In one scheme, the near-infrared fundamental driving pulse is split into two phase-locked pulses with an adjustable time delay, and this pulse pair is subsequently used for HHG [5,[7][8][9]. Although this method has been successfully used it is typically limited by the stability of the optical interferometer. The other scheme is based on wavefront division, whereby one HHG beam is divided into two phase-locked sources by a piezo-mounted split mirror. This configuration allows more stable interferometry [10,[18][19][20][21], but results in two beams with different spatial profiles and strong diffraction effects due to the hard edge of the split mirror. Wavefront division interferometry is also less flexible when one would like to change the intensity ratio between the two beams.In this letter we present XUV interferometry using a novel ultrastable common-path interferome-1 arXiv:1607.02386v2 [physics.optics]

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confidence: 99%

Spatially resolved Fourier transform spectroscopy in the extreme ultraviolet

Jansen

Rudolf

Freisem

et al. 2016

Optica

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“…A variant of SPIDER, that uses spatial encoding of the phase and direct spectral filtering (SEA-F-SPIDER), has been employed to spatio-temporally characterize near-single cycle pulses (Balciunas et al, 2015;Witting et al, 2011). Recent developments are direct field sampling techniques that employ a strong and short pulse and high harmonic generation to sample arbitrary electric field waveforms (Kim et al, 2013;Wyatt et al, 2016). An excellent review of ultrafast metrology can be found here (Walmsley and Dorrer, 2009).…”

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confidence: 99%

Attosecond physics at the nanoscale

et al. 2017

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Recently two emerging areas of research, attosecond and nanoscale physics, have started to come together. Attosecond physics deals with phenomena occurring when ultrashort laser pulses, with duration on the femto-and sub-femtosecond time scales, interact with atoms, molecules or solids. The laser-induced electron dynamics occurs natively on a timescale down to a few hundred or even tens of attoseconds (1 attosecond=1 as=10 −18 s), which is comparable with the optical field. For comparison, the revolution of an electron on a 1s orbital of a hydrogen atom is ∼ 152 as. On the other hand, the second branch involves the manipulation and engineering of mesoscopic systems, such as solids, metals and dielectrics, with nanometric precision. Although nano-engineering is a vast and well-established research field on its own, the merger with intense laser physics is relatively recent. In this report on progress we present a comprehensive experimental and theoretical overview of physics that takes place when short and intense laser pulses interact with nanosystems, such as metallic and dielectric nanostructures. In particular we elucidate how the spatially inhomogeneous laser induced fields at a nanometer scale modify the laser-driven electron dynamics. Consequently, this has important impact on pivotal processes such as above-threshold ionization and high-order harmonic generation. The deep understanding of the coupled dynamics between these spatially inhomogeneous fields and matter configures a promising way to new avenues of research and applications. Thanks to the maturity that attosecond physics has reached, together with the tremendous advance in material engineering and manipulation techniques, the age of atto-nano physics has begun, but it is in the initial stage. We present thus some of the open questions, challenges and prospects for experimental confirmation of theoretical predictions, as well as experiments aimed at characterizing the induced fields and the unique electron dynamics initiated by them with high temporal and spatial resolution.

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“…There are presently several techniques capable of measuring the full electric field of light pulses based on, e.g., extreme ultraviolet (XUV) -based photoelectron detection [8][9][10], electrooptic sampling [11], and XUV spectroscopy [12,13]. It is nevertheless highly desirable to extend traditional techniques in the optical domain to include absolute phase measurement capabilities, both for simplicity and sensitivity.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…The technique was demonstrated for the case of a hollow-core fiber compressor, which is representative of state-of-the art systems currently used for high-harmonic generation (HHG). The presented technique could help in closing the present gap between groundbreaking and emerging field-driven petahertz optoelectronics [24] and the existing waveform characterization techniques [7][8][9][10][11][12][13] by enabling allsolid-state measurement of the driving optical waveforms. The validity of the complete measurement depends on the validity of the model; therefore, we plan in the future to compare the results with other techniques (e.g., Refs.…”

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confidence: 99%