The scaling of high harmonics with mid-infrared driving fields and a method for the spatial isolation of individual subfemtosecond pulses.

摘要

The XUV bursts generated from the strong field processes in both gas and solid targets are increasingly becoming important coherent light sources within laboratories as the nature of their generation and control is better understood and are driving the push into studies of attosecond-scale processes in nature. This work discusses experimental studies on the characterization and application of the XUV pulses generated using both infrared and mid-infrared laser sources with femtosecond pulse durations and kHz repetition rates. The methods employed involve the manipulation of the driving fields to gain insight on the nature of the interactions between the material and field that lead to the modulation of the original waveform responsible for the observed high harmonics. Three different experiments are presented that seek to characterize the trend of the harmonics with driving wavelength, reconstruct the orbital structure of molecular targets, and spatially isolate the individual XUV bursts from each optical cycle of the driving pulse.