Attosecond electron pulses from interference of above-threshold de Broglie waves

Abstract

It is shown that the the interference of above-threshold electron de Broglie waves, generated by an intense laser pulse at a metal surface yields attosecond electron pulses. This inerference is an analogon of the superposition of high harmonics generated from rare gas atoms, resulting in trains of attosecond light pulses.Owing to the inherent kinematic dispersion, the propagation of attosecond de Broglie waves in vacuum is very different from that of attosecond light pulses, which propagate without changing shape. Above the metal surface there are "collaps bands" and "revival layers" of the electron current even at macroscopic distances. In the range of parameters considered, the maximum value of the current densities of such ultrashort electron pulses has been estimated to be of order of couple of tenths of milliamps per square centimeters.

40 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Attosecond double-slit experiment
• Experimental evidence of above-threshold photoemission in solids
• Linear and nonlinear absolute phase effects in interactions of ultrashort laser pulses with a metal nano-layer or with a plasma layer

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Nonlinear photoemission from metal surfaces induced by short laser pulses: the effect of field enhancement by surface plasmons
• Carrier-envelope phase controlled isolated attosecond pulses in the nm wavelength range, based on superradiant nonlinear Thomson-backscattering
• Electron Acceleration in Underdense Plasmas Described with a Classical Effective Theory
• Electrons diffraction scattering on a traveling wave - "Inelastic Kapitza-Dirac effect"
• Quantum Optical Aspects of High-Harmonic Generation