Abstract
Chirped multilayer mirrors have permitted mode-locked lasers to routinely generate pulses in the sub-10 fs regime. Continuous progress in the design, manufacturing, and characterization of multilayer structures has led to ever more precise group-delay dispersion control over ever broader spectral ranges. The resultant few-cycle laser fields have opened the door to the generation and measurement of isolated attosecond pulses and led to the birth of attosecond metrology. Precision multilayer dispersion control over increasing bandwidth has gradually pushed the frontier of femtosecond technology to what has been thought to be its ultimate limit: the wave cycle of visible light, allowing routine generation of sub-100 attosecond pulses. Next-generation attosecond technology will be based on synthesized multi-octave waveforms; they are expected to advance the field in several ways: first, by permitting control of electronic motions with a force variable on the atomic time scale; second, by providing sub-femtosecond optical transients for attosecond nonlinear pump-probe spectroscopy; third, by producing attosecond pulses at Angstrom wavelengths, opening the door to four-dimensional imaging with atomic resolution in space and time. In this article, we address the enabling technology: chirped multilayers for spectral separation and recombination as well as precise dispersion control of multi-octave optical radiation spanning from the ultraviolet to the mid-infrared range. This cutting-edge optical technology provides the force engineerable on atomic-to-molecular time scales and brings about the next revolution in ultrafast science.
Highlights
Observing and controlling fast-evolving processes relies on light flashes with a duration substantially shorter than the time evolution of the process of interest
After a reign of two decades, femtosecond dye lasers were replaced by Kerr-lens mode-locked Ti:sapphire lasers, in which selfphase modulation and group-delay dispersion (GDD) control by a pair of prisms allowed the pulse duration to approach [7,8] and surpass the 10 fs regime for the first time [9]
We start by addressing the problem of dividing multi-octave radiation into different spectral channels while preserving the spectral phase and amplitude distribution of the light wave, and move on to discuss the broadband dispersive multilayer mirrors required for GDD control over the individual spectral ranges
Summary
Observing and controlling fast-evolving processes relies on light flashes with a duration substantially shorter than the time evolution of the process of interest. Advanced chirped-mirror-based ultrafast systems nowadays routinely deliver powerful near-single-cycle pulses [32,33], which in turn enable the generation of trains of and isolated attosecond extreme ultraviolet pulses [34,35,36] To this end and more generally for the control of electronic phenomena with the electric force of light, precise control and shaping of the electric field evolution ( “optical field”) is of crucial importance [37,38]. We start by addressing the problem of dividing multi-octave radiation into different spectral channels while preserving the spectral phase and amplitude distribution of the light wave, and move on to discuss the broadband dispersive multilayer mirrors required for GDD control over the individual spectral ranges.
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