Vectorial Phase Retrieval for Linear Characterization of Attosecond Pulses

Abstract

The waveforms of attosecond pulses produced by high-harmonic generation carry information on the electronic structure and dynamics in atomic and molecular systems. Current methods for the temporal characterization of such pulses have limited sensitivity and impose significant experimental complexity. We propose a new linear and all-optical method inspired by widely-used multi-dimensional phase retrieval algorithms. Our new scheme is based on the spectral measurement of two attosecond sources and their interference. As an example, we focus on the case of spectral polarization measurements of attosecond pulses, relying on their most fundamental property -- being well confined in time. We demonstrate this method numerically reconstructing the temporal profiles of attosecond pulses generated from aligned $C{O}_2$ molecules.

4 pages 3 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Femtosecond Diffractive Imaging with a Soft-X-ray Free-Electron Laser
• Three-dimensional structure determination from a single view
• Molecular Recollision Interferometry in High Harmonic Generation

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• Nanoplasmonic near-field synthesis
• Time-spliced X-ray Diffraction Imaging
• The discrete sign problem: uniqueness, recovery algorithms and phase retrieval applications