Search

Using optical technology for current injection and electromagnetic emission simplifies the comparison between materials. Here, we inject current into monolayer graphene and bulk gallium arsenide (GaAs) using two-color quantum interference and detect the emitted electric field by electro-optic sampling. We find the amplitude of emitted terahertz (THz) radiation scales in the same way for both materials even though they differ in dimension, band gap, atomic composition, symmetry and lattice structure. In addition, we observe the same mapping of the current direction to the light characteristics. With no electrodes for injection or detection, our approach will allow electron scattering timescales to be directly measured. We envisage that it will enable exploration of new materials suitable for generating terahertz magnetic fields., Comment: 4 figures

The ability to manipulate the space-time structure of light waves diversifies light-matter interaction and light-driven applications. Conventionally, metasurfaces are employed to locally control the amplitude and phase of light fields by the material response and structure of small meta-atoms. However, the fixed spatial structures of metasurfaces offer limited opportunities. Here, using quantum control we introduce a new approach that enables the amplitude, sign, and even configuration of the generated light fields to be manipulated in an all-optical manner. Following this approach, we demonstrate the generation of flying doughnut terahertz (THz) pulses. We show that the single-cycle THz pulse radiated from the dynamic semiconductor ring current has an electric field structure that is azimuthally polarized and that the space- and time-resolved magnetic field has a strong, isolated longitudinal component. As a first application, we detect absorption features from ambient water vapor on the spatiotemporal structure of the measured electric fields and the calculated magnetic fields. Quantum control is a powerful and flexible route to generating any structured light pulse in the THz range, while pulse compression of cylindrical vector beams is available for very high-power magnetic-pulse generation from the mid-infrared to near UV spectral region. Pulses such as these will serve as unique probes for spectroscopy, imaging, telecommunications, and magnetic materials.

Structured waves are ubiquitous for all areas of wave physics, both classical and quantum, where the wavefields are inhomogeneous and cannot be approximated by a single plane wave. Even the interference of two plane waves, or a single inhomogeneous (evanescent) wave, provides a number of nontrivial phenomena and additional functionalities as compared to a single plane wave. Complex wavefields with inhomogeneities in the amplitude, phase, and polarization, including topological structures and singularities, underpin modern nanooptics and photonics, yet they are equally important, e.g., for quantum matter waves, acoustics, water waves, etc. Structured waves are crucial in optical and electron microscopy, wave propagation and scattering, imaging, communications, quantum optics, topological and non-Hermitian wave systems, quantum condensed-matter systems, optomechanics, plasmonics and metamaterials, optical and acoustic manipulation, and so forth. This Roadmap is written collectively by prominent researchers and aims to survey the role of structured waves in various areas of wave physics. Providing background, current research, and anticipating future developments, it will be of interest to a wide cross-disciplinary audience., Comment: 110 pages, many figures

We propose and experimentally demonstrate that the trihydrogen cation (H$_3^+$) can be produced via single photoionization of the molecular hydrogen dimer (H$_4$). Using near-infrared, femtosecond laser pulses and coincidence momentum imaging, we find that the dominant channel after single ionization of the dimer is the ejection of a hydrogen atom within a few hundred femtoseconds, leaving an H3+ cation behind. The formation mechanism is supported and well reproduced by an ab-initio molecular dynamics simulation. This is a new pathway of H$_3^+$ formation from ultracold hydrogen gas that may help explain the unexpected high abundance of H$_3^+$ in the interstellar medium in the universe.

We theoretically demonstrate a one-to-one mapping between the direction of electron ionization and the phase delay between a linearly polarized VUV and a circular IR laser pulse. To achieve this, we use an ultrashort VUV pulse that defines the moment in time and space when an above threshold electron is released in the IR pulse. The electron can then be accelerated to high velocities escaping in a direction completely determined by the phase delay between the two pulses. The dipole matrix element to transition from an initial bound state of the N$_2$ molecule, considered in this work, to the continuum is obtained using quantum mechanical techniques that involve computing accurate continuum molecular states. Following release of the electron in the IR pulse, we evolve classical trajectories, neglecting the Coulomb potential and accounting for quantum interference, to compute the distribution of the direction and magnitude of the final electron momentum. The concept we theoretically develop can be implemented to produce nanoscale ring currents that generate large magnetic fields., Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures

Measuring the field of visible light with high spatial resolution has been challenging, as many established methods only detect a focus-averaged signal. Here, we introduce a near-field method for optical field sampling that overcomes that limitation by employing the localization of the enhanced near-field of a nanometric needle tip. A probe field perturbs the photoemission from the tip, which is induced by a pump pulse, generating a field-dependent current modulation that can easily be captured with our electronic detection scheme. The approach provides reliable characterization of near-petahertz fields. We show that not only the spiral wave-front of visible femtosecond light pulses carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) can be resolved, but also the field evolution with time in the focal plane. Additionally, our method is polarization sensitive, which makes it applicable to vectorial field reconstruction., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, supplemental information

We formulate a transparent measure that quantifies chirality in single electron ionization triggered in atoms, which are achiral systems. We do so in the context of Ar driven by a new type of optical fields that consists of two non-collinear laser beams giving rise to chirality that varies in space across the focus of the beams. Our computations account for realistic experimental conditions. To define this measure of chirality, we first find the sign of the electron final momentum scalar triple product $\mathrm{{\bf{p}}_{k}\cdot ({\bf{p}}_{i}\times {\bf p}_{j})}$ and multiply it with the probability for an electron to ionize with certain values for both $\mathrm{p_{k}}$ and $\mathrm{p_{i}p_{j}}$. Then, we integrate this product over all values of $\mathrm{p_{k}}$ and $\mathrm{p_{i}p_{j}}$. We show this to be a robust measure of chirality in electron ionization triggered by globally chiral electric fields., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures

Recollision physics and attosecond pulse generation meld the precision of optics with collision physics. As a follow-up to our previous work, we reveal a new direction for the study of electronic structure and multielectron dynamics by exploiting the collision-physics nature of recollision. We show experimentally that, by perturbing recollision trajectories with an infrared field, photorecombination time delays can be measured entirely optically using the Cooper minimum in argon as an example. In doing so, we demonstrate the relationship between recollision trajectories and the transition moment coupling the ground and continuum states. In particular, we show that recollision trajectories are influenced by their parent ion, while it is commonly assumed they are not. Our work paves the way for the entirely optical measurement of ultrafast electron dynamics and photorecombination delays due to electronic structure, multielectron interaction, and strong-field driven dynamics in complex molecular systems and correlated solid-state systems., Comment: C.Z. and G.G.B. contributed equally to this work

We present a novel approach to single-shot characterization of the spectral phase of broadband laser pulses. Our method is inexpensive, insensitive to alignment and combines the simplicity and robustness of the dispersion scan technique, that does not require spatio-temporal pulse overlap, with the advantages of single-shot pulse characterization methods such as single-shot frequency-resolved optical gating at a real-time reconstruction rate of several Hz.

High-harmonic generation is the cornerstone of nonlinear optics. It has been demonstrated in a wide range of crystalline systems including dielectrics, semiconductors, and semi-metals, as well as in gases, leaving metals out due to their low damage threshold. Here, we report on the high-harmonic generation in metallic titanium nitride (TiN) films. TiN is a refractory plasmonic metal, known for its high melting temperature and laser damage threshold, with optical properties similar to those of gold. We show that TiN can withstand laser pulses with peak intensities as high as 13 TW/cm$^2$, one order of magnitude higher than gold, enabling the emission of intraband harmonics up to photon energies of 11 eV. These harmonics can pave the way for compact and efficient plasmonic devices producing vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) frequency combs. Through numerical calculations and experimental studies, we show that the intensity scaling and angular anisotropy of the emitted VUV radiation stem from the anisotropic conduction band structure of TiN, thus confirming its intraband origin.

Measuring the delay for an electron to emerge from different states is one of the major achievements of attosecond science. This delay can have two origins - the electron wave packet is reshaped during departure by the electrostatic field of the ionizing medium or it is modified by dynamic interaction with the remaining electrons. Most experiments have observed the former, but confirmation requires a complex calculation. A direct measurement of multielectron dynamics is needed. Photo-recombination - the inverse of photoionization - occurs naturally during electron recollision and can be measured by combining a perturbing beam to modify the recollision electron before recombination. These in situ methods allow us to unambiguously isolate multielectron dynamics - the reference being the spectral phase of an attosecond pulse simultaneously measured in spectral regions without multielectron interaction. Here, we measure the group delay of the recollision electron caused by plasmonic resonance dynamics in Xe, simulate the in situ measured spectral phase of a recollision electron generated in the presence of the plasmonic resonance in C$_{60}$ and present a corresponding semi-classical theory based on the strong-field approximation. Our results suggest that in situ techniques, together with 300 eV recollision electrons, will allow the ultimate time response of electronic matter to be measured., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

Strong-field methods in solids enable new strategies for ultrafast nonlinear spectroscopy and provide all-optical insights into the electronic properties of condensed matter in reciprocal and real space. Additionally, solid-state media offers unprecedented possibilities to control high-harmonic generation using modified targets or tailored excitation fields. Here we merge these important points and demonstrate circularly-polarized high-harmonic generation with polarization-matched excitation fields for spectroscopy of chiral electronic properties at surfaces. The sensitivity of our approach is demonstrated for structural helicity and termination-mediated ferromagnetic order at the surface of silicon-dioxide and magnesium oxide, respectively. Circularly polarized radiation emanating from a solid sample now allows to add basic symmetry properties as chirality to the arsenal of strong-field spectroscopy in solids. Together with its inherent temporal (femtosecond) resolution and non-resonant broadband spectrum, the polarization control of high harmonics from condensed matter can illuminate ultrafast and strong field dynamics of surfaces, buried layers or thin films., Comment: 24 pages, 5 figures

Multiphoton-ionized electrons are born into a strong light field that will determine their short-term future. By controlling the infrared beam, we enable atoms or molecules to generate extreme ultraviolet (XUV) pulses and synthesize attosecond pulses - the shortest controlled events ever produced. Here we show that a weak obliquely incident beam imposes an optical grating on the fundamental beam, resulting in a spatially modulated attosecond pulse. We observe the modulation on a spectrally resolved near-field XUV image, encoding all information of the spectral phase of the recollision electron and, therefore, the attosecond pulse produced by structureless atoms. Near-field imaging is an efficient method for measuring the duration of attosecond pulses, especially important for soft X-ray pulses created in helium. For more complex systems, it includes auto ionization and giant plasmon resonances., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures

When intense light irradiates a quantum system, an ionizing electron recollides with its parent ion within the same light cycle and, during that very brief (few femtosecond) encounter, its kinetic energy sweeps from low to high energy and back. Therefore, recollision offers unprecedented time resolution and it is the foundation on which attosecond science is built. For simple systems, recolliding trajectories are shaped by the strong field acting together with the Coulomb potential and they can be readily calculated and measured. However, for more complex systems, multielectron effects are also important because they dynamically alter the recolliding wave packet trajectories. Here, we theoretically study Fano resonances, one of the most accessible multielectron effects, and we show how multielectron dynamics can be unambiguously isolated when we use in situ measurement. The general class of in situ measurement can provide key information needed for time-dependent ab initio electronic structure theory and will allow us to measure the ultimate time response of matter., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

We report a decreased surface wettability when polymer films on a glass substrate are treated by ultra-fast laser pulses in a back-illumination geometry. We propose that back-illumination through the substrate confines chemical changes beneath the surface of polymer films, leaving the surface blistered but chemically intact. To confirm this hypothesis, we measure the phase contrast of the polymer when observed with a focused ion beam. We observe a void at the polymer-quartz interface that results from the expansion of an ultrafast laser-induced plasma. A modified polymer layer surrounds the void, but otherwise the film seems unmodified. We also use X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy to confirm that there is no chemical change to the surface. When patterned with partially overlapping blisters, our polymer surface shows increased hydrophobicity. The increased hydrophobicity of back-illuminated surfaces can only result from the morphological change. This contrasts with the combined chemical and morphological changes of the polymer surface caused by a front-illumination geometry., Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures

Clinicians face several significant barriers to search and synthesize accurate, succinct, updated, and trustworthy medical information from several literature sources during the practice of medicine and patient care. In this talk, we will be presenting our research behind the development of a Focused Clinical Search Service, powered by a Healthcare Knowledge Graph, to interpret the query intent behind clinical search queries and retrieve relevant medical snippets from a diverse corpus of medical literature., Comment: Under Review as a Podium Talk at the AMIA Informatics Summit 2021

A near-infrared laser generates gain on transitions between the $\text{B}^{\text{2}} \Sigma_{\text{u}}^{\text{+}}$ and $\text{X}^{\text{2}} \Sigma_{\text{g}}^{\text{+}}$ states of the nitrogen molecular cation in part by coupling the $\text{X}^{\text{2}} \Sigma_{\text{g}}^{\text{+}}$ and $\text{A}^{\text{2}} \Pi_{\text{u}}$ states in the V-system. Traditional time resolved pump-probe measurements rely on post-ionization coupling by the pump pulse to initialize dynamics in the $\text{A}^{\text{2}} \Pi_{\text{u}}$ state. Here we show that a weak second excitation pulse reduces ambiguity because it acts only on the ion independent of ionization. The additional control pulse can increase gain by moving population to the $\text{A}^{\text{2}} \Pi_{\text{u}}$ state, which modifies the lasing emission in two distinct ways. The presence of fast decoherence on $\text{X}^{\text{2}} \Sigma_{\text{g}}^{\text{+}}$ to $\text{A}^{\text{2}} \Pi_{\text{u}}$ transitions may prevent the formation of a coherent rotational wave packet in the ground state in our experiment, but the control pulse can reverse impulsive alignment by the pump pulse to remove rotational wave packets in the $\text{B}^{\text{2}} \Sigma_{\text{u}}^{\text{+}}$ state.

We develop a quasi-classical theory of high harmonic generation in semiconductors based on an interband current that has been transformed from Bloch to Wannier basis. The Wannier quasi-classical approach reveals a complete picture of the mechanisms shaping high harmonic generation, such that quantitative agreement with full quantum calculations is obtained. The intuitive picture revealed by quasi-classical wavepacket propagation will be helpful in the interpretation and design of high harmonic and attosecond experiments. Beyond that, the capacity to quantitatively model quantum dynamics with classical trajectories should prove useful for a wider spectrum of condensed matter research, including coherent control, transport theory, and strong field physics., Comment: 9 pages; 5 figures; 2 appendices

We demonstrate a novel method to measure the temporal evolution of electric fields with optical frequencies. Our technique is based on the detection of transient currents in air plasma. These directional currents result from sub-cycle ionization of air with a short pump pulse, and the steering of the released electrons with the pulse to be sampled. We assess the validity of our approach by comparing it with different state-of-the-art laser-pulse characterization techniques. Notably, our method works in ambient air and facilitates a direct measurement of the field waveform, which can be viewed in real time on an oscilloscope in the exact same way as a radio frequency signal.

Nonlinear absorption of femtosecond laser pulses provides a unique opportunity to confine energy deposition in any medium to a region that is below the focal diameter of a pulse. Illumination of a polymer film through a transparent high bandgap material such as glass, followed by nonlinear absorption of 800 nm light in polymers, allows us to further restrict absorption to a very thin layer along the propagation direction. We demonstrate this confinement by simulating femtosecond-laser-induced polymer modification by linear, two-photon and three-photon absorption, and discuss the control over energy absorption in polymers that multiphoton processes offer. Energy deposited behind a thin polymer film induces a protruding blister. We present experimental results of blister diameter and height scaling with pulse energy. Using 0.95 NA focussing, we obtained laser-induced blisters with diameters as small as 700 nm suggesting blister-based Laser-Induced Forward Transfer is possible on and below the single-micron scale. Sub-micrometer blister formation using femtosecond lasers also offers a novel method of direct, precise laser-writing of microstructures on films with single laser pulses. This method is a possible alternative to lithography, laser milling, and laser-based additive machining which leaves the surface composition unchanged., Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Physical Reviews Applied

Double ionization in intense laser fields can comprise electron correlations, which manifest in the non-independent emission of two electrons from an atom or molecule. However, experimental methods that directly access the electron emission times have been scarce. Here, we explore the application of an all-optical streaking technique to strong-field double ionization both theoretically and experimentally. We show that both sequential and non-sequential double ionization processes lead to streaking delays that are distinct from each other and single ionization. Moreover, coincidence detection of ions and electrons provides access to the emission time difference, which is encoded in the two-electron momentum distributions. The experimental data agree very well with simulations of sequential double ionization. We further test and discuss the application of this method to non-sequential double ionization, which is strongly affected by the presence of the streaking field.

The strong coupling between intense laser fields and valence electrons in molecules causes a distortion of the potential energy hypersurfaces which determine the motion of nuclei in a molecule and influences possible reaction pathways. The coupling strength varies with the angle between the light electric field and valence orbital, and thereby adds another dimension to the effective molecular potential energy surface, allowing for the emergence of light-induced conical intersections. Here, we demonstrate in theory and experiment that the full complexity of such light-induced potential energy surfaces can be uncovered. In H$_2^+$, the simplest of molecules, we observe a strongly modulated angular distribution of protons which has escaped prior observation. These modulations directly result from ultrafast dynamics on the light-induced molecular potentials and can be modified by varying the amplitude, duration and phase of the mid-infrared dressing field. This opens new opportunities for manipulating the dissociation of small molecules using strong laser fields.

Electron motion on the (sub-)femtosecond time scale constitutes the fastest response in many natural phenomena such as light-induced phase transitions and chemical reactions. Whereas static electron densities in single molecules can be imaged in real-space using scanning tunnelling and atomic force microscopy, probing real-time electron motion inside molecules requires ultrafast laser pulses. Here, we demonstrate an all-optical approach to imaging an ultrafast valence electron wave packet in real-time with a time-resolution of a few femtoseconds. We employ a pump-probe-deflect scheme that allows us to prepare an ultrafast wave packet \textit{via} strong-field ionization and directly image the resulting charge oscillations in the residual ion. This approach extends and overcomes limitations in laser-induced orbital imaging and may enable the real-time imaging of electron dynamics following photoionization such as charge migration and charge transfer processes.

We introduce a new technique for the generation of magnetic impulses. This technique is based on coherent control of electrical currents using cylindrical laser beams with azimuthal polarization. When used to ionize a medium, in this case atomic hydrogen is considered, an azimuthal current impulse is driven. The spatial distribution of this current bears close resemblance to that of a solenoid, and produces a magnetic field impulse. The excitation and relaxation dynamics of this current temporally confine the resulting magnetic field to a Tesla-scale, terahertz bandwidth impulse. Importantly, the magnetic fields are spatially isolated from electric fields. This all-optical approach will enable ultrafast time-domain spectroscopy of magnetic phenomena., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures