Research

Experimental strong-field physics is a fast-growing area of nonlinear optics, triggered by the development of isolated attosecond (as; 1 as = 10−18 s) pulses (IAP) [1]/attosecond pulse trains (APT) [2-5]. These extreme ultraviolet (EUV or XUV) pulses generated through the process of high-order harmonic generation (HHG) [6] exhibits exceptional laser-like properties, capable of providing attosecond timescales and angstrom space-scale resolution. Hence, these pulses are promising candidates for the investigation of a broad class of atomic and/or molecular ultra-fast processes that require the aforementioned spatio-temporal resolution. For example, studies on charge migration and intermediate auger processes during ionization, femtosecond (fs) pump-probe spectroscopy with attosecond precision, high-resolution imaging, nonlinear processes in the XUV photon energies and attosecond chemistry, to name a few, are feasible via as pulses. Given these possibilities, research at LASE is aimed towards building such a facility capable of investigating atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics using attosecond pulses within the Light and Matter Physics (LAMP) theme of the Raman Research Institute (RRI).

References

1. Gilbertson, S.; Khan, S. D.; Wu, Y.; Chini, M.; Chang, Z. Physical review letters 2010, 105, 093902.

2. Krausz, F.; Ivanov, M. Reviews of Modern Physics 2009, 81, 163.

3. Popmintchev, D.; Hernández-García, C.; Dollar, F.; Mancuso, C.; Pérez-Hernández, J. A.; Chen, M.-C.; Hankla, A.; Gao, X.; Shim, B.; Gaeta, A. L., et al. Science 2015, 350, 1225–1231.

4. Chini, M.; Zhao, K.; Chang, Z. Nature Photonics 2014, 8, 178.

5. Falcão-Filho, E. L.; Lai, C.-J.; Hong, K.-H.; Gkortsas, V.-M.; Huang, S.-W.; Chen, L.-J.; Kärtner, F. X. Applied Physics Letters 2010, 97, 061107.

6. Corkum, P. B. Physical review letters 1993, 71, 1994.