Single Isolated Attosecond Pulses Generation with Double Optical Gating

Abstract

Isolated attosecond pulses are powerful tools for exploring electron dynamics in matter. We proposed and demonstrated a technique called generalized double optical gating for generating isolated attosecond pulses. The double optical gating scheme, relaxing the stringent requirement on laser pulse duration from ≤ 5 fs to pulse duration close to the amplifier output, would make attophysics more accessible to many laboratories that are capable of producing such multicycle laser pulses. The isolated attosecond pulses were measured by reconstructing the streaked photoelectron spectrogram. The same setup was used to trace the spatial profile of a femtosecond Bessel beam, which serves as a demonstration of attosecond pulse applications. We also review a technique for stabilizing the carrier-envelope phase of grating-based laser amplifiers, which controls the grating separation. The phase-stabilized lasers are required for generating isolated attosecond pulses with double optical gating as well as other schemes.