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.
In the last three decades, we have witnessed incredible advances in laser technology and in the understanding of nonlinear laser-matter interactions, crowned recently by the award of the Nobel prize to Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland [1,2]. It is now routinely possible to produce few-cycle femtosecond (1 fs = 10 −15 s) laser pulses in the visible and mid-infrared regimes [3,4]. By focusing such ultrashort laser pulses on gas or solid targets, possibly in a presence of nano-structures [5], the targets are subjected to an ultra-intense electric field, with peak field strengths approaching the binding field inside the atoms themselves. Such fields permit the exploration of the interaction between strong electromagnetic coherent radiation and an atomic or molecular system with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution [6]. On one hand, HHG nowadays can be used to generate attosecond pulses in the extreme ultraviolet [7,8], or even in the soft X-ray regime [9]. Such pulses themselves may be used for dynamical spectroscopy of matter; despite carrying modest pulse energies, they exhibit excellent coherence properties [10,11]. Combined with femtosecond pulses they can also be used to extract information about the laser pulse electric field itself [12]. HHG sources therefore offer an important alternative to other sources of XUV and X-ray radiation: synchrotrons, free electron lasers, X-ray lasers, and laser plasma sources. Moreover, HHG pulses can provide information about the structure of the target atom, molecule or solid [13][14][15]. Of course, to decode such information from a highly nonlinear HHG signal is a challenge, and that is why a possibly perfect, and possibly "as analytical as possible" theoretical understanding of these processes is in high demand. Here is the first instance where SFA offers its basic services.Since electronic motion is governed by the waveform of the laser electric field, an important quantity to describe the electric field shape is the so-called absolute phase or carrier-envelope phase (CEP). Control over the CEP is paramount for extracting information about electron dynamics, and to retrieve structural information from atoms and molecules [13,16,17]. For instance, in HHG an electron is liberated from an atom or molecule through ionization, which occurs close to the maximum of the electric field. Within the oscillating field, the electron can thus accelerate along oscillating trajectories, which may result in recollision with the parent ion, roughly when the laser field approaches a zero value. Control over the CEP is particularly important for HHG, when targets are driven by laser pulses comprising only one or two optical cycles. In that situation the CEP determines the relevant electron trajectories, i.e. the CEP determines whether emission results in a single or in multiple attosecond bursts of radiation [16,18].The influence of the CEP on electron emission is also extremely important. It was demonstrated for instance in an anti-correlation experiment, in which the number of AT...
Emission of high-order harmonics from solids provides a new avenue in attosecond science. On the one hand, it allows us to investigate fundamental processes of the nonlinear response of electrons driven by a strong laser pulse in a periodic crystal lattice. On the other hand, it opens new paths toward efficient attosecond pulse generation, novel imaging of electronic wave functions, and enhancement of high-order harmonic-generation (HHG) intensity. A key feature of HHG in a solid (as compared to the well-understood phenomenon of HHG in an atomic gas) is the delocalization of the process, whereby an electron ionized from one site in the periodic lattice may recombine in any other. Here, we develop an analytic model, based on the localized Wannier wave functions in the valence band and delocalized Bloch functions in the conduction band. This Wannier-Bloch approach assesses the contributions of individual lattice sites to the HHG process and hence precisely addresses the question of localization of harmonic emission in solids. We apply this model to investigate HHG in a ZnO crystal for two different orientations, corresponding to wider and narrower valence and conduction bands, respectively. Interestingly, for narrower bands, the HHG process shows significant localization, similar to harmonic generation in atoms. For all cases, the delocalized contributions to HHG emission are highest near the band-gap energy. Our results pave the way to controlling localized contributions to HHG in a solid crystal
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