Conclusive Evidence of an Attosecond Pulse Train Observed with the Mode-Resolved Autocorrelation Technique

Nabekawa, Yasuo; Shimizu, Toshihiko; Okino, Tomoya; Furusawa, Kentaro; Hasegawa, H.; Yamanouchi, Kaoru; Midorikawa, Katsumi

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.96.083901

Cited by 136 publications

(80 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…To address the question of mutual coherence among XUV harmonics and the resulting attosecond pulse generation from overdense plasmas, we have chosen the method of XUV autocorrelation (AC), which has already been applied successfully to the temporal characterization of atomic harmonic emission [24][25][26] (for details, see the Methods section). The technique is demanding in itself, but its application to plasma harmonics presents a particularly formidable challenge.…”

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confidence: 99%

Attosecond phase locking of harmonics emitted from laser-produced plasmas

et al. 2008

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Laser-driven coherent extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) sources provide pulses lasting a few hundred attoseconds 1,2 , enabling real-time access to dynamic changes of the electronic structure of matter 3,4 , the fastest processes outside the atomic nucleus. These pulses, however, are typically rather weak. Exploiting the ultrahigh brilliance of accelerator-based XUV sources 5 and the unique time structure of their laser-based counterparts would open intriguing opportunities in ultrafast X-ray and high-field science, extending powerful nonlinear optical and pump-probe techniques towards X-ray frequencies, and paving the way towards unequalled radiation intensities. Relativistic laser-plasma interactions have been identified as a promising approach to achieve this goal 6-13 . Recent experiments confirmed that relativistically driven overdense plasmas are able to convert infrared laser light into harmonic XUV radiation with unparalleled efficiency, and demonstrated the scalability of the generation technique towards hard X-rays 14-19 . Here we show that the phases of the XUV harmonics emanating from the interaction processes are synchronized, and therefore enable attosecond temporal bunching. Along with the previous findings concerning energy conversion and recent advances in high-power laser technology, our experiment demonstrates the feasibility of confining unprecedented amounts of light energy to within less than one femtosecond.The nonlinear response of matter exposed to intense femtosecond laser pulses gives rise to the emission of highfrequency radiation at harmonics of the laser oscillation frequency. If the harmonics are phase-locked, their superposition results in a train of attosecond bursts 20 . The concept has been so far successfully implemented in atomic gases 21 , and culminated in isolated attosecond pulses by using few-cycle laser drivers 1,2 . The low generation efficiency of harmonic radiation from atoms has motivated research into alternative concepts. Dense, femtosecond-laser-produced plasmas hold promise of converting laser light into coherent harmonics with much higher efficiency and of exploiting much higher laser intensities, because the plasma medium-in contrast to the atomic emitters-imposes no restriction on the strength of the laser field driving the harmonics [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] . Recent experimental studies of harmonics produced from overdense plasmas impressively corroborate several theoretical predictions: the high conversion efficiency 19 , the favourable scalability of the generation technique towards high photon energies 14,16,19 and excellent divergence due to the spatial coherence of the generated harmonics 19,22 . Whether the high-order harmonics that are produced in overdense plasmas • gold-coated off-axis parabolic mirror with the same focal length as the laser focusing parabola. The recollimating mirror is mounted on a flipper stage for easy withdrawal, thus enabling the spectral characterization of the emitted XUV light. Thin metal filters (typically 150 nm Al, In or Sn)...

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Attosecond phase locking of harmonics emitted from laser-produced plasmas

et al. 2008

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“…So far, the direct measurement of the spatiotemporally averaged duration of the individual pulses of an as-pulse train was based on the second-order AC technique [24,32]. An extension of the technique to a frequency-resolved optical gating (FROG)-like approach will provide detailed information, i.e.…”

Section: Toward Xuv-frog-type Measurementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Instead, this is achieved by triggering two-photon ionization processes with the XUV radiation and subsequent detection of the generated ions or PEs. Several materials and different ionization processes have been investigated in this context such as two-photon ionization of helium [29,30], two-photon above-threshold ionization (ATI) of helium [31][32][33], two-photon double ionization of helium [34] and two-photon ATI of argon [33,35]. In all cases, the ions or PEs were detected using suitable ion or electron time-of-flight (TOF) spectrometers.…”

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Temporal characterization of attosecond pulses emitted from solid-density plasmas

et al. 2010

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“…Experimental efforts in this time scale have been restricted to XUV-IR pump-probe schemes [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] or in situ electron-ion collision methods [8]. Systematic developments in highpulse-energy HHG [9][10][11][12][13] and XUV supercontinua [14][15][16][17][18][19] paved the way to time-delay spectroscopic studies [20] and XUV-pump-XUV-probe experiments [21,22] that have lately demonstrated their first proof-of-principle application in the measurement of induced, ultrafast evolving atomic coherences in an atomic continuum [20,22]. Such measurements are free of interventions from unwanted channels, opened through quasiresonant multi-IR-photon transitions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disclosing intrinsic molecular dynamics on the 1-fs scale through extreme-ultraviolet pump-probe measurements

et al. 2014

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Through frequency up-conversion of polarization-shaped, femtosecond laser pulses nonlinearly interacting with xenon atoms, energetic, broadband, coherent, XUV continuum radiation is generated. By exploiting the thus-formed short-duration XUV pulses, all the optically allowed excited states of H 2 are coherently populated. Nuclear and electronic 1-fs-scale dynamics are subsequently investigated by means of XUV-pump-XUV-probe measurements, which are compared to the results of ab initio calculations. The revealed dynamics reflects the intrinsic molecular behavior, as the XUV probe pulse hardly distorts the molecular potential.

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Conclusive Evidence of an Attosecond Pulse Train Observed with the Mode-Resolved Autocorrelation Technique

Cited by 136 publications

References 22 publications

Attosecond phase locking of harmonics emitted from laser-produced plasmas

Attosecond phase locking of harmonics emitted from laser-produced plasmas

Temporal characterization of attosecond pulses emitted from solid-density plasmas

Disclosing intrinsic molecular dynamics on the 1-fs scale through extreme-ultraviolet pump-probe measurements

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