Attosecond Science: Recent Highlights and Future Trends

摘要

We review the first ten years of attosecond science with a selection of recenthighlights and trends and give an outlook on future directions. After introducingthe main spectroscopic tools, we give recent examples of representativeexperiments employing them. Some of the most fundamental processesin nature have been studied with some results initiating controversial discussions.Experiments on the dynamics of single-photon ionization illustratethe importance of subtle effects on such extreme timescales and lead us toquestion some of the well-established assumptions in this field. Attosecondtransient absorption, as the first all-optical approach to resolve attoseconddynamics, has been used to study electron wave packet interferences in helium.The attoclock, a recent method providing attosecond time resolutionwithout the explicit need for attosecond pulses, has been used to investigateelectron tunneling dynamics and geometry. Pushing the frontiers inattosecond quantum mechanics with increasing temporal and spatial resolutionand often limited theoretical models results in unexpected observations.At the same time, attosecond science continues to expand intomore complexsolid-state and molecular systems, where it starts to have impact beyond itstraditional grounds.