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In the last few decades, ultrafast demagnetization elicited by ultrashort laser pulses has been the subject of a large body of work that aims to better understand and control this phenomenon. Although specific magnetic materials' properties play a key role in defining ultrafast demagnetization dynamics, features of the driving laser pulse such as its duration and photon energy might also contribute. Here, we report ultrafast demagnetization of a cobalt/platinum multilayer in a broad spectral range spanning from the near-infrared (near-IR) to the mid-infrared (mid-IR), with wavelengths between 0.8 and 8.7 $\mu$m. The ultrafast dynamics of the macroscopic magnetization is tracked via the time-resolved magneto-optical Kerr effect. We show that the ultrafast demagnetization of the sample can be efficiently induced over that entire excitation spectrum with minimal dependence on the excitation wavelength. Instead, we confirm that the temporal profile of the pump excitation pulse is an important factor influencing ultrafast demagnetization dynamics.

Browser fingerprinting can be used to identify and track users across the Web, even without cookies, by collecting attributes from users' devices to create unique "fingerprints". This technique and resulting privacy risks have been studied for over a decade. Yet further research is limited because prior studies used data not publicly available. Additionally, data in prior studies lacked user demographics. Here we provide a first-of-its-kind dataset to enable further research. It includes browser attributes with users' demographics and survey responses, collected with informed consent from 8,400 US study participants. We use this dataset to demonstrate how fingerprinting risks differ across demographic groups. For example, we find lower income users are more at risk, and find that as users' age increases, they are both more likely to be concerned about fingerprinting and at real risk of fingerprinting. Furthermore, we demonstrate an overlooked risk: user demographics, such as gender, age, income level and race, can be inferred from browser attributes commonly used for fingerprinting, and we identify which browser attributes most contribute to this risk. Our data collection process also conducted an experiment to study what impacts users' likelihood to share browser data for open research, in order to inform future data collection efforts, with responses from 12,461 total participants. Female participants were significantly less likely to share their browser data, as were participants who were shown the browser data we asked to collect. Overall, we show the important role of user demographics in the ongoing work that intends to assess fingerprinting risks and improve user privacy, with findings to inform future privacy enhancing browser developments. The dataset and data collection tool we provide can be used to further study research questions not addressed in this work., Comment: In Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies 2025(1)

Dispersion management of few-cycle pulses is crucial for ultrafast optics and photonics. Often, nontrivial dispersion is compensated using complex optical systems or minimized through careful design of waveguides. Here, we present dispersion-managed adiabatic frequency conversion enabling efficient downconversion of an 11.1-fs near-IR pulse to an 11.6-fs mid-IR pulse spanning an octave of bandwidth from 2-4 $\mu$m. The adiabatic frequency converter is designed to impart a constant group delay over the entire bandwidth, eliminating the need for complex dispersion management and opening a new avenue for dispersion engineering in ultrafast optics and photonics. Notably, dispersion engineering through the position-dependent conversion position of an adiabatic conversion device constitutes an additional mechanism for dispersion control in ultrafast optics and photonics while maintaining high conversion efficiency for broadband pulses.

Ultrashort electron beams with femtosecond to picosecond bunch durations offer unique opportunities to explore active research areas ranging from ultrafast structural dynamics to ultra-high dose-rate radiobiological studies. We present a straightforward method to generate MeV-ranged electron beams in ambient air through the tight focusing of a few-cycle, mJ-class femtosecond IR laser. At one meter from the source, the highest measured dose rate of 0.15 Gy/s exceeds the yearly dose limit in less than one second and warrants the implementation of radiation protection. Two-dimensional Particle-In-Cell simulations confirm that the acceleration mechanism is based on the relativistic ponderomotive force and show theoretical agreement with the measured electron energy. Furthermore, we discuss the scalability of this method with the continuing development of mJ-class high average power lasers, moreover providing a promising approach for FLASH radiation therapy., Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures

We establish time-resolved high harmonic generation (tr-HHG) as a powerful spectroscopy for photoinduced dynamics in strongly correlated materials through a detailed investigation of the insulator-to-metal transitions in vanadium dioxide. We benchmark our technique by comparing our measurements to established momentum-resolved ultrafast electron diffraction, and theoretical density functional calculations. Tr-HHG allows distinguishing of individual dynamic channels, including a transition to a thermodynamically hidden phase. In addition, the HHG yield is shown to be modulated at a frequency characteristic of a coherent phonon in the equilibrium monoclinic phase over a wide range of excitation fluences. These results demonstrate that tr-HHG is capable of tracking complex dynamics in solids through its sensitivity to the band structure., Comment: 20 pages and 4 figures main text, 8 pages and 4 figures supplementary information

In the first part, we discuss the stability of the strong slope and of the subdifferential of a lower semicontinuous function with respect to Wijsman perturbations of the function, i.e. perturbations described via Wijsman convergence. In the second part, we show how subdifferential sum rules can be viewed as special cases of subdifferential stability results., Comment: 16 pages

A function in a class $\mathcal{F}(X)$ is said to be subdifferentially determined in $\mathcal{F}(X)$ if it is equal up to an additive constant to any function in $\mathcal{F}(X)$ with the same subdifferential. A function is said to be subdifferentially representable if it can be recovered from a subdifferential. We identify large classes of lower semicontinuous functions that possess these properties., Comment: 18 pages

In a previous paper, the authors showed that in a reflexive Banach space the lower limit of a sequence of maximal monotone operators is always representable by a convex function. The present paper gives precisions to the latter result by demonstrating the continuity of the representation with respect to the epi-convergence of the representative functions, and the stability of the class of maximal monotone operators with respect to the Mosco-convergence of their representative functions., Comment: 7 pages

In this paper, an upper semismooth function is defined to be a lower semicontinuous function whose radial subderivative satisfies a mild directional upper semicontinuity property. Examples of upper semismooth functions are the proper lower semicontinuous convex functions, the lower-C$^1$ functions, the regular directionally Lipschitz functions, the Mifflin semismooth functions, the Thibault-Zagrodny directionally stable functions. It is shown that the radial subderivative of such functions can be recovered from any subdifferential of the function. It is also shown that these functions are subdifferentially determined, in the sense that if two functions have the same subdifferential and one of the functions is upper semismooth, then the two functions are equal up to an additive constant., Comment: 16 pages

We provide a formula linking the radial subderivative to other subderivatives and subdifferentials for arbitrary extended real-valued lower semicontinuous functions., Comment: 14 pages

In the framework of linear optics, light fields do not interact with each other in a medium. Yet, when their field amplitude becomes comparable to the electron binding energies of matter, the nonlinear motion of these electrons emits new dipole radiation whose amplitude, frequency and phase differ from the incoming fields. Such high fields are typically achieved with ultra-short, femtosecond (1fs = 10-15 sec.) laser pulses containing very broad frequency spectra. Here, the matter not only couples incoming and outgoing fields but also causes different spectral components to interact and mix through a convolution process. In this contribution, we describe how frequency domain nonlinear optics overcomes the shortcomings arising from this convolution in conventional time domain nonlinear optics1. We generate light fields with previously inaccessible properties because the uncontrolled coupling of amplitudes and phases is turned off. For example, arbitrary phase functions are transferred linearly to the second harmonic frequency while maintaining the exact shape of the input power spectrum squared. This nonlinear control over output amplitudes and phases opens up new avenues for applications based on manipulation of coherent light fields. One could investigate c.f. the effect of tailored nonlinear perturbations on the evolution of discrete eigenmodes in Anderson localization2. Our approach might also open a new chapter for controlling electronic and vibrational couplings in 2D-spectroscopy3 by the geometrical optical arrangement.

It is known that for convex sets, the KKM condition is equivalent to the finite intersection property. We use this equivalence to obtain a characterisation of monotone operators in terms of convex KKM maps and in terms of the existence of solutions to Minty variational inequalities. The latter result provides a converse to the seminal theorem of Minty.

Let $E$ be a real vector space with dual space $E^*$ and let $C\subset E$ be a convex subset with more than one point. Let $f : C\to\mathbb{R}$ be a function satisfying a mild stability property at 'flat' points of the (relative) boundary of $C$. We show that $f$ is convex if and only if for some linear form $c^*$ on $E$ not constant on $C$, the function $f+\lambda c^*$ is quasiconvex for all $\lambda\in\mathbb{R}$., Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure

We show through experiments that a transition from laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) regime to a plasma wakefield acceleration (PWFA) regime can drive electrons up to energies close to the GeV level. Initially, the acceleration mechanism is dominated by the bubble created by the laser in the nonlinear regime of LWFA, leading to an injection of a large number of electrons. After propagation beyond the depletion length, leading to a depletion of the laser pulse, whose transverse ponderomotive force is not able to sustain the bubble anymore, the high energy dense bunch of electrons propagating inside bubble will drive its own wakefield by a PWFA regime. This wakefield will be able to trap and accelerate a population of electrons up to the GeV level during this second stage. Three dimensional (3D) particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations support this analysis, and confirm the scenario.

We show that a point is solution of the Minty variational inequality of subdifferential type for a given function if and only if the function is increasing along rays starting from that point. This provides a characterization of the monotone polar of subdifferentials of lower semicontinuous functions, which happens to be a common subset of their graphs depending only on the function., Comment: 4 pages

We provide a new proof that the subdifferential of a proper lower semicontinuous convex function on a Banach space is maximal monotone by adapting the pattern commonly used in the Hilbert setting. We then extend the arguments to show more precisely that subdifferentials of proper lower semicontinuous prox-bounded functions possess the Br{\o}ndsted-Rockafellar property., Comment: 6 pages

We provide a first-order necessary and sufficient condition for optimality of lower semicontinuous functions on Banach spaces using the concept of subdifferential. From the sufficient condition we derive that any subdifferential operator is monotone absorbing, hence maximal monotone when the function is convex., Comment: 6 pages

We propose an extended forward-backward algorithm for approximating a zero of a maximal monotone operator which can be split as the extended sum of two maximal monotone operators. We establish the weak convergence in average of the sequence generated by the algorithm under assumptions similar to those used in classical forward-backward algorithms. This provides as a special case an algorithm for solving convex constrained minimization problems without qualification condition., Comment: 9 pages

Using a laser plasma accelerator, experiments with a 80 TW and 30 fs laser pulse demonstrated quasi-monoenergetic electron spectra with maximum energy over 0.4 GeV. This is achieved using a supersonic He gas jet and a sharp density ramp generated by a high intensity laser crossing pre-pulse focused 3 ns before the main laser pulse. By adjusting this crossing pre-pulse position inside the gas jet, among the laser shots with electron injection more than 40% can produce quasi-monoenergetic spectra. This could become a relatively straight forward technique to control laser wakefield electron beams parameters., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures

Development of x-ray phase contrast imaging applications with a laboratory scale source have been limited by the long exposure time needed to obtain one image. We demonstrate, using the Betatron x-ray radiation produced when electrons are accelerated and wiggled in the laser-wakefield cavity, that a high quality phase contrast image of a complex object (here, a bee), located in air, can be obtained with a single laser shot. The Betatron x-ray source used in this proof of principle experiment has a source diameter of 1.7 microns and produces a synchrotron spectrum with critical energy E_c=12.3 +- 2.5 keV and 10^9 photons per shot in the whole spectrum., Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures

In geometric group theory one uses group actions on spaces to gain information about groups. One natural space to use is the Cayley graph of a group. The Cayley graph arguments that one encounters tend to require local finiteness, and hence finite generation of the group. In this paper, I take the theory of intersections of splittings of finitely generated groups (as developed by Scott, Scott-Swarup, and Niblo-Sageev-Scott-Swarup), and rework it to remove finite generation assumptions. Whereas the aforementioned authors relied on the local finiteness of the Cayley graph, I capitalize on the Bass-Serre trees for the splittings., Comment: 41 pages, 9 figures

Betatron X-ray radiation in laser-plasma accelerators is produced when electrons are accelerated and wiggled in the laser-wakefield cavity. This femtosecond source, producing intense X-ray beams in the multi kiloelectronvolt range has been observed at different interaction regime using high power laser from 10 to 100 TW. However, none of the spectral measurement performed were at sufficient resolution, bandwidth and signal to noise ratio to precisely determine the shape of spectra with a single laser shot in order to avoid shot to shot fluctuations. In this letter, the Betatron radiation produced using a 80 TW laser is characterized by using a single photon counting method. We measure in single shot spectra from 8 to 21 keV with a resolution better than 350 eV. The results obtained are in excellent agreement with theoretical predictions and demonstrate the synchrotron type nature of this radiation mechanism. The critical energy is found to be Ec = 5.6 \pm 1 keV for our experimental conditions. In addition, the features of the source at this energy range open novel perspectives for applications in time-resolved X-ray science., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

We show that the lower limit of a sequence of maximal monotone operators on a reflexive Banach space is a representable monotone operator. As a consequence, we obtain that the variational sum of maximal monotone operators and the variational composition of a maximal monotone operator with a linear continuous operator are both representable monotone operators.