Attosecond pulse generation, characterization and application: Attosecond pulses measured from the attosecond lighthouse

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Attosecond pulses measured from the attosecond lighthouse

High harmonic generation is the creation of a train of coherent, attosecond bursts.  We can control the direction of these bursts through the wavefront of the driving field.  Here, we use a technique called the attosecond lighthouse, where we impose a spatial chirp at the focus of the driving field causing its wavefront to rapidly rotate while generating the attosecond pulses; each pulse is uniquely directed in the far field and becomes isolated.  We generate attosecond pulses by two different driving sources:  a 1 kHz Ti:Sapphire centered at 760 nm, and the idler of a 100 Hz optical parametric amplifier (OPA) centered at 1.8mm.  For the higher flux attosecond pulse generated by the 1 kHz source, we can use photoelectron streaking to measure the pulse duration at a second interaction region.  We also fully characterize an attosecond pulse at the time of generation using an in-situ measurement, useful for the lower repetition rate and lower flux provided by the 1.8mm source.

Attosecond Science at uOttawa and NRC