Abstract
We employ a pair of single-cycle near-infrared pulses to control coherent transfer of single electrons between the contacts of a plasmonic nanocircuit. As a result, attosecond and highly nonlinear phenomena occur at pJ pulse energies.
Highlights
We demonstrated that single-cycle pulses of minute energy content may result in extremely nonlinear optical phenomena at the nanoscale by exploiting an electronic circuit with a few-nanometer gap between the tips of an optical antenna
The strong electrical bias provided by the field contained in ultrashort optical pulses was harnessed to drive tunneling and ballistic acceleration of electrons to generate a current through the free-space gap with PHz bandwidth [1]
We further explore this concept by gaining direct temporal information via interferomeric autocorrelation measurements with two identical replicas of truly single-cycle driving pulses
Summary
We demonstrated that single-cycle pulses of minute energy content may result in extremely nonlinear optical phenomena at the nanoscale by exploiting an electronic circuit with a few-nanometer gap between the tips of an optical antenna. The strong electrical bias provided by the field contained in ultrashort optical pulses was harnessed to drive tunneling and ballistic acceleration of electrons to generate a current through the free-space gap with PHz bandwidth [1]. This non-perturbative process is fully coherent with the driving radiation and occurs within a half-cycle of the near-IR carrier wavelength. We further explore this concept by gaining direct temporal information via interferomeric autocorrelation measurements with two identical replicas of truly single-cycle driving pulses
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