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Petahertz optical oscilloscope

Nature Photonics volume 7, pages 958–962 (2013)Cite this article

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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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Figure 1: Basic idea of the petahertz optical oscilloscope.
Figure 2: Schematic set-up of the petahertz optical oscilloscope and theoretical calculations.
Figure 3: Waveform measurement of few-cycle pulses.
Figure 4: Waveform measurement of few-cycle pulses with different CEPs.

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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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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Joint Attosecond Science Laboratory, University of Ottawa and National Research Council, 100 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, K1A 0R6, Ontario, Canada

    Kyung Taec Kim, Chunmei Zhang, Andrew D. Shiner, D. M. Villeneuve & P. B. Corkum

  2. INRS-Énergie et Matériaux, 1650 boulevard Lionel-Boulet, C.P. 1020, Varennes, J3X 1S2, Québec, Canada

    Bruno E. Schmidt & François Légaré

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  1. Kyung Taec Kim
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  2. Chunmei Zhang
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Contributions

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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Correspondence to P. B. Corkum.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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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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