Attosecond interferometry with self-amplified spontaneous emission of a free-electron laser

Abstract

Light-phase-sensitive techniques, such as coherent multidimensional spectroscopy, are well-established in a broad spectral range, already spanning from radio-frequencies in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to visible and ultraviolet wavelengths in nonlinear optics with table-top lasers. Here, the ability to tailor the phases of electromagnetic waves with high precision is essential. In the present contribution we achieve phase control of extreme-ultraviolet pulses from a free-electron laser (FEL) on the attosecond timescale in a Michelson-type all-reflective interferometric autocorrelator. By varying the relative phase of the generated pulse replicas with sub-cycle precision we observe the field interference, i.e. the light-wave oscillation with a period of 129 as. The successful transfer of a powerful optical method towards short-wavelength FEL science and technology paves the way towards utilization of advanced nonlinear methodologies even at partially coherent soft X-ray FEL sources that rely on self-amplified spontaneous emission.

arXiv comment24 pages, including 4 pages supplementary material, in total 6 figures

References in corpus (10)

• Femtosecond Diffractive Imaging with a Soft-X-ray Free-Electron Laser
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• Spectro-temporal shaping of seeded free-electron laser pulses
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• The monochromator beamline at FLASH: performance, capabilities and upgrade plans
• Hanbury Brown and Twiss interferometry at a free-electron laser
• C${}_{60}$ in intense femtosecond laser pulses: nonlinear dipole response and ionization
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• Attosecond tracking of light absorption and refraction in fullerenes
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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Tracking Attosecond Electronic Coherences Using Phase-Manipulated Extreme Ultraviolet Pulses
• Seeded x-ray free-electron laser generating radiation with laser statistical properties
• Atomic, molecular and optical physics applications of longitudinally coherent and narrow bandwidth Free-Electron Lasers
• Electronic Quantum Coherence in Glycine Molecules Probed with Ultrashort X-ray Pulses in Real Time
• Strong-field quantum control in the extreme ultraviolet using pulse shaping
• Nonlinear coherence effects in transient-absorption ion spectroscopy with stochastic extreme-ultraviolet free-electron laser pulses
• Michelson Interferometry of High-order Harmonic Generation in Solids
• Phase cycling of extreme ultraviolet pulse sequences generated in rare gases
• Table-top interferometry on extreme time and wavelength scales
• High-Gain Harmonic Generation with temporally overlapping seed pulses and application to ultrafast spectroscopy
• Improved stabilization scheme for extreme ultraviolet quantum interference experiments