Abstract
Short-pulse metrology and dynamic studies in the extreme ultraviolet (XUV) spectral range greatly benefit from interferometric measurements. In this contribution a Michelson-type all-reflective split-and-delay autocorrelator operating in a quasi amplitude splitting mode is presented. The autocorrelator works under a grazing incidence angle in a broad spectral range (10 nm - 1 μm) providing collinear propagation of both pulse replicas and thus a constant phase difference across the beam profile. The compact instrument allows for XUV pulse autocorrelation measurements in the time domain with a single-digit attosecond precision and a useful scan length of about 1 ps enabling a decent resolution of E/ΔE = 2000 at 26.6 eV. Its performance for selected spectroscopic applications requiring moderate resolution at short wavelengths is demonstrated by characterizing a sharp electronic transition at 26.6 eV in Ar gas. The absorption of the 11th harmonic of a frequency-doubled Yb-fiber laser leads to the well-known 3s3p64p1P1 Fano resonance of Ar atoms. We benchmark our time-domain interferometry results with a high-resolution XUV grating spectrometer and find an excellent agreement. The common-path interferometer opens up new opportunities for short-wavelength femtosecond and attosecond pulse metrology and dynamic studies on extreme time scales in various research fields.
Highlights
Interferometry in the extreme ultraviolet spectral range (XUV) plays a key role in attosecond pulse metrology for more than 20 years[1]
Short-pulse metrology and dynamic studies in the extreme ultraviolet (XUV) spectral range greatly benefit from interferometric measurements
The transform-limited XUV pulse length derived from the measurement is σXUV = ∆τ/ 2 = 5.67 fs. Note that this is in excellent agreement with simulations of the High-harmonic generation (HHG) phase matching window[35] and the single-atom response[36], resulting in an XUV pulse duration of < 6 fs[27]
Summary
Interferometry in the extreme ultraviolet spectral range (XUV) plays a key role in attosecond pulse metrology for more than 20 years[1]. It has led to a wide range of applications ranging from attosecond spectroscopy[2] to coherent diffractive imaging on the nanoscale using table-top sources[3,4] It is the capability of interferometric methods to access the relative phases and amplitudes of interfering waves known from optics that is used to track propagating quantum objects, such as charge or spin waves in matter on extremely short distances and corresponding ultrafast time scales[5]. Along these lines, phase-sensitive light wave metrology in time and frequency domain goes hand-in-hand with advanced coherent spectroscopy and imaging applications using electrons, ions or photons as observable. The resolution is uniform across the entire photon energy range, which usually is not the case for grating-based spectrometers
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