Attosecond Streaking in the Water Window: A New Regime of Attosecond Pulse Characterization

Cousin, Seth L.; Palo, Nicola Di; Buades, Barbara; Teichmann, Stephan; Reduzzi, Maurizio; Devetta, M.; Kheifets, Anatoli; Sansone, G.; Biegert, Jens

doi:10.1103/physrevx.7.041030

Cited by 90 publications

(94 citation statements)

References 74 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…However, few-fs SXR pulses at the carbon K-edge would be able to probe ultrafast dynamics on the 5-20 fs timescale, such as passage through conical intersections in organic molecules. Temporal characterization of the SXR pulses 22,46 is needed, in particular in the long gas cell case, but this is out of the scope of the current paper. However, the temporal resolution of the beamline is estimated from a transient absorption experiment in the following section.…”

Section: Hhg Gas Cell Lengthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficient table-top dual-wavelength beamline for ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy in the soft X-ray region

Barreau

Ross

Garg

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We present a table-top beamline providing a soft X-ray supercontinuum extending up to 350 eV from high-order harmonic generation with sub-13 fs 1300 nm driving pulses and simultaneous production of sub-5 fs pulses centered at 800 nm. Optimization of the high harmonic generation in a long and dense gas medium yields a photon flux of ~2 x 10 7 photons/s/1% bandwidth at 300 eV. The temporal resolution of X-ray transient absorption experiments with this beamline is measured to be 11 fs for 800 nm excitation. This dual-wavelength approach, combined with high flux and high spectral and temporal resolution soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy, is a new route to the study of ultrafast electronic dynamics in carbon-containing molecules and materials at the carbon K-edge. 2/10 Description of the table-top dual-wavelength beamlineThe beamline is summarized in Figure 1. It uses a 13 mJ , 800 nm, 30 fs, 1 kHz Ti:Sapphire laser (Coherent Legend Elite Duo), whose energy is split into 11 mJ +2 mJ to produce the probe and pump pulses, respectively, used in time-resolved X-ray transient absorption experiments. This section details the simultaneous compression of SWIR (centered at 1300 nm or 1400 nm) and visible-near infrared (centered at 800 nm) pulses, and the characteristics of the soft X-ray spectrometer. Production of few-cycle short-wave infrared pulsesThe few-cycle pulses centered at 1300 nm in the SWIR are produced using an OPA followed by spectral broadening in a hollow-core fiber filled with a rare gas 35 and compression with chirped mirrors 36 . The 11 mJ 800 nm beam is further split into 0.5 mJ and 10.5 mJ for use in a two-stage OPA, which converts the 800 nm to SWIR (1300 nm). The two-stage system is obtained from Light Conversion and is designed to provide CEP stability of the signal pulses. The first stage is a low energy OPA (TOPAS Prime), pumped by 0.5 mJ, which provides 90 J of 2 m pulses in the idler. Due to the parametric amplification process, the idler pulses are passively CEP stabilized, with a stability of <200 mrad. They are then used as the seed for the white light generation in a second, high energy, OPA (HE-TOPAS) pumped with the remaining 10.5 mJ of 800 nm light. This design should ensure the CEP stability of the signal pulses over the 1200-1600 nm tunable range of the OPA, regardless of the CEP stability of the pump laser. However, the following results are obtained with a CEP-averaged signal pulse. The 2.8 mJ, 1300 nm, 40 fs output is focused with a 2-m focusing mirror to a focal size of 390 m (at 1/e 2 ) at the entrance of a 3-m-long, 700-m-inner diameter stretched hollow-core fiber (HCF) filled with 0.4 bar of argon (Few-Cycle Inc.). The ratio of beam

show abstract

Section: Hhg Gas Cell Lengthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficient table-top dual-wavelength beamline for ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy in the soft X-ray region

Barreau

Ross

Garg

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…5(c). It has a FWHM pulse duration of 165 as, about half of the upper limit of 322 as reported in [3] based on Fig. 2(c).…”

mentioning

confidence: 68%

“…This would work if the spectral phase can be compensated over the whole broad energy region. As addressed in [3], there is still no practical method available to do that. In the meanwhile, accurate phase retrieval of a broadband pulse using the spectrogram has been shown to be very slowly converging.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this contribution, with a new theoretical approach and algorithm, we demonstrate that our new method can accurately retrieve the spectral phase of a broadband pulse, and more importantly, we can check if phases have been accurately retrieved. We then use our new method to evaluate the SXR attosecond pulses reported in [1][2][3].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We also retrieved the streaking data from [3]. The central photon energy of the SXR is at 250 eV, with a bandwidth of about 200 eV, corresponding to a TL pulse of about 10 as.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Metrology of Time-Domain Soft X-Ray Attosecond Pulses and Reevaluation of Pulse Durations of Three Recent Experiments

Xi-nan¹,

Wang²,

Yu³

et al. 2020

Phys. Rev. Applied

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Attosecond pulses in the soft-X-ray (SXR) to water-window energy region offer the tools for creating and studying target specific localized inner-shell electrons or holes in materials, enable monitoring or controlling charge and energy flows in a dynamic system on attosecond timescales. Recently, a number of laboratories have reported generation of continuum harmonics in the hundredelectron-volt to kilovolt region with few-cycle long-wavelength mid-infrared lasers. These harmonics have the bandwidth to support pulses with duration of few-to few-ten attoseconds. But harmonics generated in a gas medium have attochirps that cannot be fully compensated by materials over a broad spectral range; thus, realistically what are the typical shortest attosecond pulses that one can generate? To answer this question, it is essential that the temporal attosecond pulses be accurately characterized. By re-analyzing the soft X-ray harmonics reported in three recent experiments [1-3] using a newly developed broadband phase retrieval algorithm, we show that their generated attosecond pulses are all longer than about 60 as. Since broadband pulses tend to have high-order chirps away from the spectral center of the pulse, the algorithm has to be able to retrieve accurately the phase over the whole bandwidth. Our re-evaluated pulse durations are found to be longer than those previously reported. We also introduce the autocorrelation (AC) of the streaking spectrogram. By comparing the ACs from the experiments and from the retrieved SXR pulses, the accuracy of the retrieved results can be directly visualized to ensure that correct phases have been obtained. Our retrieval method is fast and accurate, and it shall provide a powerful tool for the metrology of few-ten-attosecond pulses in the future.

show abstract

Optical Waveform Synthesis and Its Applications

Cirmi

Mainz

Silva‐Toledo

et al. 2023

Laser & Photonics Reviews

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The quest for ever‐shorter optical pulses has been ongoing for over half a century. Although few‐cycle pulses have been generated for nearly 40 years, pulse lengths below the single‐cycle limit have remained an elusive goal for a long time. For this purpose, optical waveform synthesizers, generating high‐energy, high‐average‐power pulses via coherent combination of multiple pulses covering different spectral regions, have been recently developed. They allow unprecedented control over the generated optical waveforms, spanning an extremely broad spectral range from ultraviolet to infrared. Such control allows for steering strong‐field interactions with increased degrees of freedom. When driving high‐harmonic generation, tailored waveforms can produce bright attosecond pulse trains and even isolated attosecond pulses with tunable spectra up to the soft X‐ray range. In this paper recent progress on parametric and hollow‐core fiber waveform synthesizers is discussed. Newly developed seeding schemes; absolute, relative, and spectral phase measurement; and control techniques suitable for synthesizers are described. The progress on serial and parallel waveform synthesis based on Ti:sapphire and Ytterbium laser systems and their latest applications in high‐harmonic generation in gaseous and solid media, attosecond science, and laser wakefield acceleration is discussed.

show abstract

Attosecond Streaking in the Water Window: A New Regime of Attosecond Pulse Characterization

Cited by 90 publications

References 74 publications

Efficient table-top dual-wavelength beamline for ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy in the soft X-ray region

Efficient table-top dual-wavelength beamline for ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy in the soft X-ray region

Metrology of Time-Domain Soft X-Ray Attosecond Pulses and Reevaluation of Pulse Durations of Three Recent Experiments

Optical Waveform Synthesis and Its Applications

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About