Abstract
The time-dependent field of an electromagnetic pulse can be measured if there is a fast enough gate. For terahertz radiation, femtosecond photoinjection of free carriers into a semiconductor in the presence of the terahertz radiation can serve as the gate1. For visible or infrared radiation, attosecond photoionization of a gas target in the presence of the optical field is a direct analogue2,3,4,5,6,7,8. Here, we show that nonlinear optical mixing9,10,11,12,13 in a medium in which attosecond pulses are being generated can also be used to measure the time-dependent field of an optical pulse. The gate is the phase accumulated by the recollision electron during the subcycle time interval between ionization and recombination. We show that the instantaneous field of an unknown pulse is imprinted onto the deflection of the attosecond extreme ultraviolet pulse using an all-optical set-up with a bandwidth up to 1 PHz.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank D. Crane and B. Avery for technical assistance. The authors also acknowledge financial support from Canada's NRC (National Research Council of Canada) and NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada), the US AFOSR (Air Force Office of Scientific Research) and the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) PULSE (Program in Ultrafast Laser Science and Engineering) programme through a grant by AMRDEC (the US Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center).
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K.T.K. conceived the idea. F.L., D.M.V. and P.B.C. supervised the project. K.T.K., C.Z., A.D.S. and B.E.S. performed the experiment and collected the data. K.T.K analysed the experimental data. K.T.K. and D.M.V. provided the numerical analysis. All authors contributed in writing the manuscript.
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Kim, K., Zhang, C., Shiner, A. et al. Petahertz optical oscilloscope. Nature Photon 7, 958–962 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2013.286
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2013.286
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