Plasma mirrors as attosecond light sources

Abstract

Attosecond science has been a rapidly growing field of research in the past 15 years. Up to now, all experiments exploiting attosecond pulses have relied, for the production of these pulses, on high-order harmonic generation of femtosecond laser pulses in gases at moderate intensities of about 1014 W/cm2. Alternative ways of obtaining attosecond pulses are being actively studied to overcome the limitations of these attosecond sources. This tutorial will focus on one of these, which consists in specularly reflecting ultraintense (>1016 W/cm2) femtosecond laser pulses on plasma mirrors –i.e. dense plasmas generated on initially solid targets. The physics of this extreme laser-matter interaction will be explained, and the present control schemes and performances of these sources summarized.