Abstract
Attosecond pulses at photon energies that cover the principal absorption edges of the building blocks of materials are a prerequisite for time-resolved probing of the triggering events leading to electronic dynamics such as exciton formation and annihilation. We demonstrate experimentally the isolation of individual attosecond pulses at the carbon K-shell edge (284 eV) in the soft X-ray water window with pulse duration below 400 as and with a bandwidth supporting a 30-as pulse duration. Our approach is based on spatiotemporal isolation of long-wavelength-driven harmonics and validates a straightforward and scalable approach for robust and reproducible attosecond pulse isolation.
Highlights
Attosecond pulses at photon energies that cover the principal absorption edges of the building blocks of materials are a prerequisite for time-resolved probing of the triggering events leading to electronic dynamics such as exciton formation and annihilation
Isolated attosecond pulses are generated by confining high harmonic generation (HHG) driven with an intense laser to a short temporal window that is on the order of the field cycle duration of the driving laser
We use a 100-mm-focal length spherical mirror to focus the pulses into the HHG target, which consists of a 1.5-mm-outer diameter tube with 0.3-mm entrance and exit holes through which the beam is focused; see the Methods section for further details and Fig. 1 for a schematic
Summary
Attosecond pulses at photon energies that cover the principal absorption edges of the building blocks of materials are a prerequisite for time-resolved probing of the triggering events leading to electronic dynamics such as exciton formation and annihilation. Isolated attosecond pulses are generated by confining high harmonic generation (HHG) driven with an intense laser to a short temporal window that is on the order of the field cycle duration of the driving laser. This condition can be met by either producing few-cycle duration pulses[3] or through a variety of methods that effectively confine the recollision to a similar time span[4,5,6]. We demonstrate experimentally at the carbon K-edge at 284 eV spatiotemporal isolation (STI) of a single-attosecond pulse in the water window
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