Attosecond band-gap dynamics in silicon

Schultze, Martin; Ramasesha, Krupa; Pemmaraju, C. D.; Sato, Shunsuke A.; Whitmore, Desiré; Gandman, Andrey; Prell, James S.; Borja, Lauren J.; Prendergast, David; Yabana, Kazuhiro; Neumark, Daniel M.; Leone, Stephen R.

doi:10.1126/science.1260311

Cited by 462 publications

(346 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Generation of high harmonics even for the circularly polarized laser fields is consistent with scattering from neighbouring sites in the crystal. These results open up the possibility of measuring field-induced charge flow 23,24,28,29 and imaging atomic orbitals in solids 30 , which we discuss in the Methods. In analogy to the conventional electron diffraction methods, solidstate HHG allows us to use electrons that are already present in the bulk matter to image the ångström-scale structure of the condensed matter.…”

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confidence: 90%

Anisotropic high-harmonic generation in bulk crystals

2016

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The microscopic valence electron density determines the optical, electronic, structural and thermal properties of materials. However, current techniques for measuring this electron charge density are limited: for example, scanning tunnelling microscopy is confined to investigations at the surface, and electron di raction requires very thin samples to avoid multiple scattering 1 . Therefore, an optical method is desirable for measuring the valence charge density of bulk materials. Since the discovery of high-harmonic generation (HHG) in solids 2 , there has been growing interest in using HHG to probe the electronic structure of solids 3-11 . Here, using single-crystal MgO, we demonstrate that high-harmonic generation in solids is sensitive to interatomic bonding. We find that harmonic e ciency is enhanced (diminished) for semi-classical electron trajectories that connect (avoid) neighbouring atomic sites in the crystal. These results indicate the possibility of using materials' own electrons for retrieving the interatomic potential and thus the valence electron density, and perhaps even wavefunctions, in an all-optical setting.High-harmonic generation (HHG) in bulk crystal is attributed to the sub-cycle electronic motion driven by an intense laser field [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] . There has been a growing interest in utilizing HHG to probe the electronic structure of solids 8,9,11 . Vampa et al. reconstructed the momentum-dependent bandgap of ZnO along the -M direction using HHG from a two-colour driving field 11 . Luu et al. retrieved the energy dispersion of the lowest conduction band of SiO 2 assuming that the harmonics are produced by the intraband currents 8 . The dependence of solid-state HHG on the coupling of multiple electronic bands has also been identified with the production of even harmonics in GaSe 9 and the emergence of a second plateau in rare-gas solids 12 . These findings show the possibility of using solidstate HHG to probe the electronic band structures in solids, but the analyses are so far limited to one dimension. For a complete electronic structure, it is desirable to exploit the microscopic process to measure the periodic potential in three dimensions (real space). This is analogous to tomographic imaging of a molecule, where the three-dimensional spatial information (that is, orbital wavefunction) of the target molecule is extracted [13][14][15] . Those measurement techniques are based critically on the dependence of HHG efficiency on molecular alignment with respect to the laser field 16 .In this letter, we demonstrate the strong sensitivity of HHG to the atomic-scale structure in the cubic wide-bandgap crystal MgO. First, using a linearly polarized field, we measure a highly anisotropic angular distribution in high-harmonic signal-despite the isotropic linear and weakly anisotropic nonlinear optical properties of the cubic crystal in the perturbative regime 17 . Second, we observe a strong ellipticity dependence of the HHG yield similar to the gas-phase HHG 18 for small elliptic...

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confidence: 90%

Anisotropic high-harmonic generation in bulk crystals

2016

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“…With the availability of high-resolution VUV spectrometers [15], one can conceivably monitor the recurrence of the vibronic wave packet created close to a localized reaction center, even in solution. ATAS has already been applied successfully to selected studies of strongfield ionization [5] and dissociation [16], wave-packet motion [3,4,6,17,18], and correlated electron dynamics [19][20][21][22], as well as phase transition dynamics in condensed matter [23,24], with unprecedented energy and time resolution. As ATAS encodes both the amplitudes and phases of interacting states, reconstruction and control of an electron wave packet-in both space and time-has been achieved [22].…”

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confidence: 99%

Reconstruction of an excited-state molecular wave packet with attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy

et al. 2016

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Attosecond science promises to allow new forms of quantum control in which a broadband isolated attosecond pulse excites a molecular wave packet consisting of a coherent superposition of multiple excited electronic states. This electronic excitation triggers nuclear motion on the molecular manifold of potential energy surfaces and can result in permanent rearrangement of the constituent atoms. Here, we demonstrate attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy (ATAS) as a viable probe of the electronic and nuclear dynamics initiated in excited states of a neutral molecule by a broadband vacuum ultraviolet pulse. Owing to the high spectral and temporal resolution of ATAS, we are able to reconstruct the time evolution of a vibrational wave packet within the excited B 1 u + electronic state of H 2 via the laser-perturbed transient absorption spectrum.

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“…This technique provides rich information about the interplay between the laser field and the Coulombic potential on the excited electron dynamics. Its background-free nature enables us to use a large range of gas pressures and to reveal the influence of collisions in the relaxation process.Transient Absorption Spectroscopy (TAS) in the extreme ultraviolet (XUV) range is a powerful technique for ultrafast dynamical studies, from the gas phase [1][2][3] to the solid state [4,5]. The recent progress of attosecond science has made the extension of TAS to the attosecond regime (ATAS) a reality.…”

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confidence: 99%

Phase-resolved two-dimensional spectroscopy of electronic wave packets by laser-induced XUV free induction decay

et al. 2017

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We present a novel time-and phase-resolved, background-free scheme to study the extreme ultraviolet dipole emission of a bound electronic wavepacket, without the use of any extreme ultraviolet exciting pulse. Using multiphoton transitions, we populate a superposition of quantum states which coherently emit extreme ultraviolet radiation through free induction decay. This emission is probed and controlled, both in amplitude and phase, by a time-delayed infrared femtosecond pulse. We directly measure the laser-induced dephasing of the emission by using a simple heterodyne detection scheme based on two-source interferometry. This technique provides rich information about the interplay between the laser field and the Coulombic potential on the excited electron dynamics. Its background-free nature enables us to use a large range of gas pressures and to reveal the influence of collisions in the relaxation process.Transient Absorption Spectroscopy (TAS) in the extreme ultraviolet (XUV) range is a powerful technique for ultrafast dynamical studies, from the gas phase [1][2][3] to the solid state [4,5]. The recent progress of attosecond science has made the extension of TAS to the attosecond regime (ATAS) a reality. In the past few years, different configurations of ATAS experiments have emerged. In the first and most intuitive scheme, the XUV attosecond pulses probe a sample that has been pre-excited by an infrared (IR) pump laser pulse. This scheme was for instance used to follow the ultrafast coherent hole dynamics initiated in strong-field ionized krypton [1]. In the second arrangement, the XUV and IR pulses are temporally overlapped. The XUV absorption thus probes the IR-dressed atomic or molecular states, allowing the observation of light-induced states [6,7] as well as sub-cycle AC-Stark-shifts [8]. Finally, in what turned out to be the most widely used scheme, the XUV pulse comes first and serves as a pump, exciting a broadband superposition of quantum states through single-photon absorption. The wavepacket relaxes by coherently emitting XUV radiation (called XUV Free Induction Decay, XFID) that interferes with the incident light. A delayed IR laser field is used to follow or control the relaxation dynamics, such that these experiments can be seen as Transient Reshaping of the Absorption spectrum of the XUV light (TRAX) [9,10].In TRAX experiments, the delayed IR laser pulse has three main effects on the XFID emission ( Fig. 1) : (i) Damping of the emission by ionization of the excited states. This effect induces a lowering and a spectral broadening of the absorption features [2]. (ii) Field coupling of different electronic states, leading to population transfers. The resulting amplitude reshaping of the electronic wavepacket can be detected through temporal beatings in the absorption signal, as demonstrated in atoms [9,10] and molecules [11,12]. (iii) Phase shift induced by the Stark-shift of the excited states. This laser-induced phase was shown to enable full control over the absorption lineshapes, from Lorentz ...

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Attosecond band-gap dynamics in silicon

Cited by 462 publications

References 53 publications

Anisotropic high-harmonic generation in bulk crystals

Anisotropic high-harmonic generation in bulk crystals

Reconstruction of an excited-state molecular wave packet with attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy

Phase-resolved two-dimensional spectroscopy of electronic wave packets by laser-induced XUV free induction decay

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