Attosecond Pulse-shaping using a seeded free-electron laser

Abstract

Attosecond pulses are fundamental for the investigation of valence and core-electron dynamics on their natural timescale. At present the reproducible generation and characterisation of attosecond waveforms has been demonstrated only through the process of high-order harmonic generation. Several methods for the shaping of attosecond waveforms have been proposed, including metallic filters, multilayer mirrors and manipulation of the driving field. However, none of these approaches allow for the flexible manipulation of the temporal characteristics of the attosecond waveforms, and they suffer from the low conversion efficiency of the high-order harmonic generation process. Free Electron Lasers, on the contrary, deliver femtosecond, extreme ultraviolet and X-ray pulses with energies ranging from tens of $\mu$J to a few mJ. Recent experiments have shown that they can generate sub-fs spikes, but with temporal characteristics that change shot-to-shot. Here we show the first demonstration of reproducible generation of high energy ($\mu$J level) attosecond waveforms using a seeded Free Electron Laser. We demonstrate amplitude and phase manipulation of the harmonic components of an attosecond pulse train in combination with a novel approach for its temporal reconstruction. The results presented here open the way to perform attosecond time-resolved experiments with Free Electron Lasers.

References in corpus (5)

• Shaped-pulse optimisation of coherent soft-x-rays
• Coherent control with a short-wavelength Free Electron Laser
• Mode-Locking in a Free-Electron Laser Amplifier
• Multiple ionization of argon via xuv-photon absorption induced by 20-gigawatt high-harmonic pulses
• Observation and Control of Laser-Enabled Auger Decay

Cited by in corpus (26)

• Studying ultrafast Rabi dynamics with a short-wavelength seeded free-electron laser
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• Single-cycle optical control of beam electrons
• Strong-field Coherent Control of Isolated Attosecond Pulse Generation
• Atomic, molecular and optical physics applications of longitudinally coherent and narrow bandwidth Free-Electron Lasers
• Attosecond multi-photon multi-electron dynamics
• Decomposition of the transition phase in multi-sideband RABBITT schemes
• Strong-field quantum control in the extreme ultraviolet using pulse shaping
• Attosecond metrology in circular polarization
• Nonlinear optics in 2D materials: from classical to quantum
• Multiphoton interaction phase shifts in attosecond science
• High temporal and spectral resolution of stimulated x-ray Raman signals with stochastic free-electron-laser pulses
• Propensity rules and interference effects in laser-assisted photoionization of helium and neon
• Spectrally tunable ultrashort monochromatized extreme ultraviolet pulses at 100 kHz
• Phase cycling of extreme ultraviolet pulse sequences generated in rare gases
• Attosecond resolution from free running interferometric measurements
• Effect of chemical structure on the ultrafast spin dynamics in core-excited states
• Attosecond imaging of photo-induced dynamics in molecules using time-resolved photoelectron momentum microscopy
• In situ sub-50 attosecond active stabilization of the delay between infrared and extreme ultraviolet light pulses
• High-Gain Harmonic Generation with temporally overlapping seed pulses and application to ultrafast spectroscopy
• Improved stabilization scheme for extreme ultraviolet quantum interference experiments
• Intense X-ray Vortices Generation via Wavefront Shaping in high-gain Free-Electron Lasers
• Recovery of hydrogen plasma at the sub-nanosecond timescale in a plasma-wakefield accelerator
• Detailed study of quantum path interferences in high harmonic generation driven by chirped laser pulses
• General properties of the RABBITT at parity mixing conditions
• Broadband coherent XUV light from $e^{-}/e^{+}$ microbunching in an intense laser pulse