Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Attosecond lighthouses from plasma mirrors

Nature Photonics volume 6, pages 829–833 (2012)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

The nonlinear interaction of an intense femtosecond laser pulse with matter can lead to the emission of a train of sub-laser-cycle—attosecond—bursts of short-wavelength radiation1,2. Much effort has been devoted to producing isolated attosecond pulses, as these are better suited to real-time imaging of fundamental electronic processes3,4,5,6. Successful methods developed so far rely on confining the nonlinear interaction to a single sub-cycle event7,8,9. Here, we demonstrate for the first time a simpler and more universal approach to this problem10, applied to nonlinear laser–plasma interactions. By rotating the instantaneous wavefront direction of an intense few-cycle laser field11,12 as it interacts with a solid-density plasma, we separate the nonlinearly generated attosecond pulse train into multiple beams of isolated attosecond pulses propagating in different and controlled directions away from the plasma surface. This unique method produces a manifold of isolated attosecond pulses, ideally synchronized for initiating and probing ultrafast electron motion in matter.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Attosecond lighthouse principle.
Figure 2: Schematic of the experiment.
Figure 3: Experimental observation of the attosecond lighthouse effect.
Figure 4: Time-to-space mapping during the attosecond lighthouse effect.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Paul, P. M. et al. Observation of a train of attosecond pulses from high harmonic generation. Science 292, 1689–1692 (2001).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  2. Tzallas, P., Charalambidis, D., Papadogiannis, N. A., Witte, K. & Tsakiris, G. D. Direct observation of attosecond light bunching. Nature 426, 267–271 (2003).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  3. Drescher, M. et al. Time-resolved atomic inner-shell spectroscopy. Nature 419, 803–807 (2002).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  4. Uiberacker, M. et al. Attosecond real-time observation of electron tunnelling in atoms. Nature 446, 627–632 (2007).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  5. Cavalieri, A. L. et al. Attosecond spectroscopy in condensed matter. Nature 449, 1029–1032 (2007).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  6. Goulielmakis, E. et al. Real-time observation of valence electron motion. Nature 466, 739–743 (2010).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  7. Goulielmakis, E. et al. Single-cycle nonlinear optics. Science 320, 1614–1617 (2008).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  8. Sansone, G. et al. Isolated single-cycle attosecond pulses. Science 314, 443–446 (2006).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  9. Ferrari, F. et al. High-energy isolated attosecond pulses generated by above-saturation few-cycle fields. Nature Photon. 4, 875–879 (2010).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  10. Vincenti, H. & Quéré, F. Attosecond lighthouses: how to use spatiotemporally coupled light fields to generate isolated attosecond pulses. Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 113904 (2012).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  11. Akturk, S., Gu, X., Gabolde, P. & Trebino, R. The general theory of first-order spatio-temporal distortions of Gaussian pulses and beams. Opt. Express 13, 8642–8661 (2005).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  12. Kostenbauder, A. G. Ray-pulse matrices: a rational treatment for dispersive optical systems. IEEE J. Quantum Electron. 26, 1148–1157 (1990).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  13. Krausz, F. & Ivanov, M. Attosecond physics. Rev. Mod. Phys. 81, 163–234 (2009).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  14. Teubner, U. & Gibbon, P. High-order harmonics from laser-irradiated plasma surfaces. Rev. Mod. Phys. 81, 445–479 (2009).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  15. Tsakiris, G. D., Eidmann, K., Meyer-ter-Vehn, J. & Krausz, F. Route to intense single attosecond pulses. New J. Phys. 8, 19 (2006).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  16. Naumova, N. M., Nees, J. A., Sokolov, I. V., Hou, B. & Mourou, G. A. Relativistic generation of isolated attosecond pulses in a λ3 focal volume. Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 063902 (2004).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  17. Akturk, S., Gu, X., Bowlan, P. & Trebino, R. Spatio-temporal couplings in ultrashort laser pulses. J. Opt. 12, 093001 (2012).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  18. Borot, A. et al. High-harmonic generation from plasma mirrors at kilohertz repetition rate. Opt. Lett. 36, 1461–1463 (2011).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  19. Thaury, C. et al. Plasma mirrors for ultrahigh-intensity optics. Nature Phys. 3, 424–429 (2007).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  20. Quéré, F. et al. Coherent wake emission of high-order harmonics from overdense plasmas. Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 125004 (2006).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  21. Thaury, C. & Quéré, F. High-order harmonic and attosecond pulse generation on plasma mirrors: basic mechanisms. J. Phys. B 43, 213001 (2010).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  22. Nomura, Y. et al. Attosecond phase locking of harmonics emitted from laser-produced plasmas. Nature Phys. 5, 124–128 (2009).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  23. Borot, A. et al. Attosecond control of collective electron motion in plasmas. Nature Phys. 8, 416–421 (2012).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  24. Itatani, J. et al. Tomographic imaging of molecular orbitals. Nature 432, 867–871 (2004).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  25. Haessler, S. et al. Attosecond imaging of molecular electronic wavepackets. Nature Phys. 6, 200–206 (2010).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  26. Vozzi, C. et al. Generalized molecular orbital tomography. Nature Phys. 7, 822–826 (2011).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

R.L.M. acknowledges financial support from the Agence Nationale pour la Recherche through programme ANR-09-JC-JC-0063 (UBICUIL), while A.B. acknowledges support from the RTRA – Triangle de la Physique and F.Q. from the European Research Council (ERC grant no. 240013). Simulation work was performed using high-performance computing (HPC) resources from GENCI–CCRT/CINES (grant no. 2012056057).

Author information

Author notes

  1. Jonathan A. Wheeler and Antonin Borot: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée, ENSTA-Paristech, École Polytechnique, CNRS, Palaiseau, 91761, France

    Jonathan A. Wheeler, Antonin Borot, Aurélien Ricci, Arnaud Malvache & Rodrigo Lopez-Martens

  2. Service des Photons, Atomes et Molécules, CEA, DSM/IRAMIS, CEN Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, 91191, France

    Sylvain Monchocé, Henri Vincenti & Fabien Quéré

  3. Laser Solutions Unit, Thales Optronique SA, Elancourt, 78990, France

    Aurélien Ricci

Authors
  1. Jonathan A. Wheeler
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Antonin Borot
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Sylvain Monchocé
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Henri Vincenti
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Aurélien Ricci
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Arnaud Malvache
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Rodrigo Lopez-Martens
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Fabien Quéré
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

The experimental set-up was designed by A.B., J.W., F.Q. and R.L.M. The laser beam was delivered by A.R. and the experiments were performed by J.W., S.M. and A.B. The theoretical work was carried out by H.V., A.M. and F.Q.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Rodrigo Lopez-Martens or Fabien Quéré.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary information

Supplementary information (PDF 1152 kb)

Supplementary Movie 1

Supplementary Movie 1 (MOV 349 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Wheeler, J., Borot, A., Monchocé, S. et al. Attosecond lighthouses from plasma mirrors. Nature Photon 6, 829–833 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2012.284

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2012.284

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing