Two-dimensional spectral shearing interferometry for few-cycle pulse characterization

The high peak electric fields provided by single-cycle light pulses can be harnessed to manipulate and control charge motion in solid-state systems, resulting in electron emission out of metals and semiconductors [1][2][3][4][5][6] or high harmonics generation in dielectrics 7,8 . These processes are of a non-perturbative character and require precise reproducibility of the electric-field profile 9-14 . Here, we vary the carrier-envelope phase of 6-fs-long near-infrared pulses with pJ-level energy to control electronic transport in a laterally confined nanoantenna with an 8 nm gap. Peak current densities of 50 MA cm -2 are achieved, corresponding to the transfer of individual electrons in a half-cycle period of 2 fs. The observed behaviours are made possible by the strong distortion of the effective tunnelling barrier due to the extreme electric fields that the nanostructure provides and sustains under sub-cycle optical biasing. Operating at room temperature and in a standard atmosphere, the performed experiments demonstrate a robust class of nanoelectronic switches gated by phase-locked optical transients of minute energy content.Present-day high-frequency devices operate in the microwave range, but direct control of electron flow by the electric-field profile of few-cycle optical pulses has recently been demonstrated 12,15 . These experiments were based on strong perturbation of the electronic system in a dielectric material, resulting in a large incoherent background current. Nanoscale confinement of the region biased by the optical transient might avoid a significant influence of nonlinear conductivity in an insulating substrate and result in purely coherent tunnelling currents 16 that may be controlled by the precise shape of the electric field cycles. Our approach to reaching this goal is illustrated in the upper part of Fig. 1a. A single-cycle near-infrared pulse (left) is focused to a nanoscale junction of an electronic circuit (centre) with nonlinear and antisymmetric current-voltage (I-V) characteristics (right). An effective bias then arises when the exciting electric field is cosine-shaped (blue transient and blue dot in the I-V scheme) because its extremum occurs only for one polarity. Consequently, the symmetry of electronic transport is broken, even when integrating over the entire transient, and a net tunnelling current of electrons results through the potential barrier represented by the free-space gap (Fig. 1b,c). Our experiment favours tunnelling over other phenomena such as multiphoton ionization 4 by operating with ultrashort pulses and extreme nanoconfinement of the electric field. No background current exists when the control field is sineshaped (red transient and dot in the I-V characteristics, respectively), because positive and negative polarities now have precisely opposite effects. Consequently, the total current amplitude and direction may be set by varying the carrier-envelope phase (CEP), Δφ CEP , of the pulse. Owing to the single-cycle pulse duration, nanoscale constriction and fi...

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“…19). This method allowed reconstruction of the electric-field profile, that is, the amplitude and phase of the electromagnetic wave.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The spectral phase (green line in Fig. 2a) was measured with two-dimensional shearing interferometry 19 (2DSI). CEP stability and control was analysed from the f-to-2f spectral beats 20 in Fig.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Sub-cycle optical phase control of nanotunnelling in the single-electron regime

et al. 2016

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“…In the case of QSPIDER this concerns the energy or momentum resolution in the spectrometer. Several methods have been proposed to overcome these issues for SPIDER which may be helpful also in QSPIDER [34,35].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Retrieval of the amplitude and phase of the dipole matrix element by attosecond electron-wave-packet interferometry

2013

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We extend the ideas of wave-packet interferometry [Remetter et al., Nat. Phys. 2, 323 (2006)] to implement the algorithm of spectral phase interferometry for direct electric-field reconstruction (SPIDER) for characterizing the amplitude and phase of electron wave packets. Single-photon ionization by an attosecond pulse launches an electron wave packet in the continuum. Ionization by a train of two attosecond pulses in the presence of a moderate infrared pulse creates an interferogram in the final photoelectron momentum distribution. From the interferogram, the complex electron wave function can be reconstructed. If the pulses are well characterized, the amplitude and phase of the bound-free dipole matrix element can be reconstructed over a wide energy range. This is demonstrated by application of the retrieval method to momentum distributions obtained by numerical solution of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. The case of Coulombic potentials requires appropriate treatment of the laser-Coulomb coupled dynamics.

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“…As will be discussed later in this article, this simple processing through Fourier space, illustrated in Fig. 1, is intimately related to numerical methods widely used for extracting the phase from interference patterns in space [3][4][5], frequency [6,7], or time [8] domains. Finally, we remark that, unless specified, the methods discussed below will not be sensitive to the carrier-envelope (CE) phase [9]s o that it will be sufficient to measure the first-order derivative of the spectral phase, d /d.…”

Section: E͑t͒ ͑3͒mentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterization of mid-infrared femtosecond pulses [Invited]

2008

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We review different methods for characterizing mid-infrared femtosecond pulses, including linear methods such as electro-optic sampling, time-and frequency-domain interferometry, and nonlinear self-referenced methods such as frequency-resolved optical gating (FROG) and spectral phase interferometry for direct electric-field reconstruction (SPIDER). Of particular interest are methods based on upconversion through nonlinear mixing with chirped 800 nm pulses, enabling a complete measurement of mid-infrared pulses with visible-light spectrometers.

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Two-dimensional spectral shearing interferometry for few-cycle pulse characterization

Cited by 133 publications

References 12 publications

Sub-cycle optical phase control of nanotunnelling in the single-electron regime

Sub-cycle optical phase control of nanotunnelling in the single-electron regime

Retrieval of the amplitude and phase of the dipole matrix element by attosecond electron-wave-packet interferometry

Characterization of mid-infrared femtosecond pulses [Invited]

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