Attosecond Nanophysics

Abstract

IntroductionUltrafast control of electronic motion in isolated atoms with light fields has led to the birth of attosecond pulses [1,2]. Waveform-controlled, optical, few-cycle laser pulses are powerful tools to steer electrons on subfemtosecond timescales and have been successfully applied to control the electron emission from atoms [3] and the electron localization in molecules [4]. The realization of a similar level of control of the electron motion in nanocircuits has the potential to revolutionize modern electronics by enabling significantly higher computation and communication speeds [5,6].Worldwide communication relies on optical fiber networks. Data encoding and decoding, however, involves the transformation of photon-based information within the optical fibers to electronic information and vice versa and is thus the current bottleneck for ultrafast communication and information processing. Lightwavecontrolled nanocircuits (lightwave nanoelectronics) [7] are expected to reach petahertz operating frequencies which would remove the bottleneck in conventional communication technology by enabling all-optical data processing and communication. The key challenges on the way to lightwave nanoelectronics are (1) the control of electrodynamics in nanostructured materials on subcycle timescales and (2) the ability to monitor the resulting currents in nanostructured circuits with attosecond time and nanometer spatial resolution [6,[8][9][10][11]. The development and utilization of attosecond metrologies for the control and observation of ultrafast electron dynamics in nanosystems is therefore an issue with far-reaching implication. This chapter discusses selected key concepts and fundamental experiments in this area of attosecond nanophotonics.The central objective of attosecond nanophotonics is the utilization of the widely tunable optical properties of nanostructured materials. This idea, which has a long history, might be illustrated best by the special optical phenomena arising from small nanoparticles. Without deeper insight, already the makers of color-stained glass church windows in the middle ages used the properties of metallic nanoparAttosecond and XUV Physics, First Edition. Edited by Thomas Schultz and Marc Vrakking.