High harmonic emission occurs when an electron, liberated from a molecule by an incident intense laser field, gains energy from the field and recombines with the parent molecular ion. The emission provides a snapshot of the structure and dynamics of the recombining system, encoded in the amplitudes, phases and polarization of the harmonic light. Here we show with CO(2) molecules that high harmonic interferometry can retrieve this structural and dynamic information: by measuring the phases and amplitudes of the harmonic emission, we reveal 'fingerprints' of multiple molecular orbitals participating in the process and decode the underlying attosecond multi-electron dynamics, including the dynamics of electron rearrangement upon ionization. These findings establish high harmonic interferometry as an effective approach to resolving multi-electron dynamics with sub-Angström spatial resolution arising from the de Broglie wavelength of the recombining electron, and attosecond temporal resolution arising from the timescale of the recombination event.

Subfemtosecond light pulses can be obtained by superposing several high harmonics of an intense laser pulse. Provided that the harmonics are emitted simultaneously, increasing their number should result in shorter pulses. However, we found that the high harmonics were not synchronized on an attosecond time scale, thus setting a lower limit to the achievable x-ray pulse duration. We showed that the synchronization could be improved considerably by controlling the underlying ultrafast electron dynamics, to provide pulses of 130 attoseconds in duration. We discuss the possibility of achieving even shorter pulses, which would allow us to track fast electron processes in matter.

The tunnelling of a particle through a barrier is one of the most fundamental and ubiquitous quantum processes. When induced by an intense laser field, electron tunnelling from atoms and molecules initiates a broad range of phenomena such as the generation of attosecond pulses, laser-induced electron diffraction and holography. These processes evolve on the attosecond timescale (1 attosecond ≡ 1 as = 10(-18) seconds) and are well suited to the investigation of a general issue much debated since the early days of quantum mechanics--the link between the tunnelling of an electron through a barrier and its dynamics outside the barrier. Previous experiments have measured tunnelling rates with attosecond time resolution and tunnelling delay times. Here we study laser-induced tunnelling by using a weak probe field to steer the tunnelled electron in the lateral direction and then monitor the effect on the attosecond light bursts emitted when the liberated electron re-encounters the parent ion. We show that this approach allows us to measure the time at which the electron exits from the tunnelling barrier. We demonstrate the high sensitivity of the measurement by detecting subtle delays in ionization times from two orbitals of a carbon dioxide molecule. Measurement of the tunnelling process is essential for all attosecond experiments where strong-field ionization initiates ultrafast dynamics. Our approach provides a general tool for time-resolving multi-electron rearrangements in atoms and molecules--one of the key challenges in ultrafast science.

We describe a method for the complete temporal characterization of attosecond extreme ultraviolet ͑xuv͒ fields. An electron wave packet is generated in the continuum by photoionizing atoms with the attosecond field, and a low-frequency dressing laser pulse is used as a phase gate for frequency-resolved-optical-gating-like measurements on this wave packet. This method is valid for xuv fields of an arbitrary temporal structure, e.g., trains of nonidentical attosecond pulses. It establishes a direct connection between the main attosecond characterization techniques demonstrated experimentally so far, and considerably extends their scope, thus providing a general perspective on attosecond metrology.

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International audienc

We report the generation, compression, and delivery on target of ultrashort extreme-ultraviolet light pulses using external amplitude and phase control. Broadband harmonic radiation is first generated by focusing an infrared laser with a carefully chosen intensity into a gas cell containing argon atoms. The emitted light then goes through a hard aperture and a thin aluminum filter that selects a 30-eV bandwidth around a 30-eV photon energy and synchronizes all of the components, thereby enabling the formation of a train of almost Fourier-transform-limited single-cycle 170 attosecond pulses. Our experiment demonstrates a practical method for synthesizing and controlling attosecond waveforms.

Conical intersections play a crucial role in the chemistry of most polyatomic molecules, ranging from the simplest bimolecular reactions to the photostability of DNA. The real-time study of the associated electronic dynamics poses a major challenge to the latest techniques of ultrafast measurement. We show that high-harmonic spectroscopy reveals oscillations in the electronic character that occur in nitrogen dioxide when a photoexcited wave packet crosses a conical intersection. At longer delays, we observe the onset of statistical dissociation dynamics. The present results demonstrate that high-harmonic spectroscopy could become a powerful tool to highlight electronic dynamics occurring along non-adiabatic chemical reaction pathways. 1The outcome of chemical reactions is determined by the valence electronic structure of molecules. Therefore, the elucidation of elementary reaction mechanisms requires an understanding of the valence electron dynamics. Recently developed techniques that are efficient in probing valence electron dynamics include attosecond transient absorption (1), extreme ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (XUV-PES) (2), high-order harmonic spectroscopy (HHS) (3-5) and strong-field ionization (6). Both time-resolved PES (7) and time-resolved HHS are sensitive to valence electron dynamics through the molecular photoionization matrix elements.Electronic dynamics in molecules are particularly challenging to observe when they are strongly coupled to nuclear dynamics. Such situations often arise in polyatomic molecules where conical intersections between the potential energy surfaces induce very rapid radiationless transitions at particular nuclear configurations (see inset of Fig. 1) (8, 9). These features channel electronic excitation into atomic motion in such diverse contexts as the primary steps of vision (10) and the dynamics underlying electron transfer and the photostability of DNA bases (11).Here we show that high-harmonic spectroscopy reveals the variations in electronic character during the conical intersection dynamics and the subsequent dissociation of nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ). We chose NO 2 , a radical, because of its model status for theories of unimolecular dissociation (12-14) and conical intersection dynamics (15)(16)(17)(18)(19). Our results translate the previously recognized sensitivity of HHS to electronic structure into a tool for elucidating chemical reaction dynamics.High-harmonic spectroscopy can be factored into three steps: removal of an electron by an intense femtosecond laser field, acceleration of the electron in the laser field and photorecombination (20, 21). Each step contributes an amplitude and a phase to the emitted XUV radiation (20,(22)(23)(24)(25). The measurement relies on a coherent detection scheme in a transient grating geometry, using unexcited molecules as a local oscillator (4, 5). It is thus sensitive to 2 both amplitude and phase of the photorecombination matrix elements, a quantity that has recently attracted a lot of interest (26,27). Time-resolved...