Petahertz optical oscilloscope

Kyung Taec Kim, Chunmei Zhang, Andrew D. Shiner, Bruno E. Schmidt, François Légaré, D. M. Villeneuve, P. B. Corkum*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

111 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The time-dependent field of an electromagnetic pulse can be measured if there is a fast enough gate. For terahertz radiation, femtosecond photoinjection of free carriers into a semiconductor in the presence of the terahertz radiation can serve as the gate. For visible or infrared radiation, attosecond photoionization of a gas target in the presence of the optical field is a direct analogue. Here, we show that nonlinear optical mixing in a medium in which attosecond pulses are being generated can also be used to measure the time-dependent field of an optical pulse. The gate is the phase accumulated by the recollision electron during the subcycle time interval between ionization and recombination. We show that the instantaneous field of an unknown pulse is imprinted onto the deflection of the attosecond extreme ultraviolet pulse using an all-optical set-up with a bandwidth up to 1 PHz.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)958-962
Number of pages5
JournalNature Photonics
Volume7
Issue number12
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2013
Externally publishedYes

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