Attosecond pulse shaping using a seeded free-electron laser

Journal Article · Mon Feb 10 00:00:00 EST 2020 · Nature (London)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2005-6· OSTI ID:1604577

Maroju, Praveen Kumar ^[1]; Grazioli, Cesare ^[2]; Di Fraia, Michele ^[3]; Moioli, Matteo ^[1]; Ertel, Dominik ^[1]; Ahmadi, Hamed ^[1]; Plekan, Oksana ^[3]; Finetti, Paola ^[3]; Allaria, Enrico ^[3]; Giannessi, Luca ^[4]; De Ninno, Giovanni ^[5]; Spezzani, Carlo ^[3]; Penco, Giuseppe ^[3]; Spampinati, Simone ^[3]; Demidovich, Alexander ^[3]; Danailov, Miltcho B. ^[3]; Borghes, Roberto ^[3]; Kourousias, George ^[3]; Sanches Dos Reis, Carlos Eduardo ^[3]; Billé, Fulvio ^[3] ; Lutman, Alberto A. ^[6]; Squibb, Richard J. ^[7]; Feifel, Raimund ^[7]; Carpeggiani, Paolo ^[8]; Reduzzi, Maurizio ^[9]; Mazza, Tommaso ^[10]; Meyer, Michael ^[10]; Bengtsson, Samuel ^[11]; Ibrakovic, Neven ^[11]; Simpson, Emma Rose ^[11]; Mauritsson, Johan ^[11]; Csizmadia, Tamás ^[12]; Dumergue, Mathieu ^[12]; Kühn, Sergei ^[12]; Nandiga Gopalakrishna, Harshitha ^[12]; You, Daehyun ^[13]; Ueda, Kiyoshi ^[13]; Labeye, Marie ^[14]; Bækhøj, Jens Egebjerg ^[14]; Schafer, Kenneth J. ^[14]; Gryzlova, Elena V. ^[15]; Grum-Grzhimailo, Alexei N. ^[15]; Prince, Kevin C. ^[3]; Callegari, Carlo ^[3]; Sansone, Giuseppe ^[1]

---

1. Albert-Ludwigs-Univ., Freiburg (Germany)
2. The National Research Council (CNR), Trieste (Italy). Inst. of Structure of Matter (ISM)
3. Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste (Italy)
4. Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste (Italy); Lab. Nazionali di Frascati, Rome (Italy). Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare
5. Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste (Italy); Univ. of Nova Gorica (Slovenia)
6. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
7. Univ. of Gothenburg (Sweden)
8. Technische Univ. Wien, Vienna (Austria)
9. Politecnico di Milano (Italy)
10. European XFEL GmbH, Schenefeld (Germany)
11. Lund Univ. (Sweden)
12. ELI-ALPS, Szeged (Hungary)
13. Tohoku Univ., Sendai (Japan)
14. Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge, LA (United States)
15. Lomonosov Moscow State Univ., Moscow (Russia)

Attosecond pulses are central to the investigation of valence- and core-electron dynamics on their natural timescales. The reproducible generation and characterization of attosecond waveforms has been demonstrated so far only through the process of high-order harmonic generation. Several methods for shaping attosecond waveforms have been proposed, including the use of metallic filters, multilayer mirrors and manipulation of the driving field. However, none of these approaches allows the flexible manipulation of the temporal characteristics of the attosecond waveforms, and they suffer from the low conversion efficiency of the high-order harmonic generation process. Free-electron lasers, by contrast, deliver femtosecond, extreme-ultraviolet and X-ray pulses with energies ranging from tens of microjoules to a few millijoules. Recent experiments have shown that they can generate subfemtosecond spikes, but with temporal characteristics that change shot-to-shot. In this paper we report reproducible generation of high-energy (microjoule level) attosecond waveforms using a seeded free-electron laser. We demonstrate amplitude and phase manipulation of the harmonic components of an attosecond pulse train in combination with an approach for its temporal reconstruction. The results presented here open the way to performing attosecond time-resolved experiments with free-electron lasers.

• Research Organization: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC); European Union’s Horizon 2020; Italian Ministry of Research; Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (MEXT); Cooperative Research Program; The National Research Council (CNR); Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS); IMRAM Project; Swedish Research Council (VR); Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation; Foundation for the Advancement of Theoretical Physics and Mathematics; German Research Foundation (DFG)
• Grant/Contract Number: AC02-76SF00515; 641789 MEDEA; SFB925/1; SC0010431
• OSTI ID: 1604577
• Journal Information: Nature (London), Vol. 578, Issue 7795; ISSN 0028-0836
• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION
Free-electron lasers
High-harmonic generation
Ultrafast lasers