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Attosecond control of collective electron motion in plasmas

Nature Physics volume 8, pages 416–421 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

Today, light fields of controlled and measured waveform can be used to guide electron motion in atoms and molecules with attosecond precision. Here, we demonstrate attosecond control of collective electron motion in plasmas driven by extreme intensity (≈1018 W cm−2) light fields. Controlled few-cycle near-infrared waves are tightly focused at the interface between vacuum and a solid-density plasma, where they launch and guide subcycle motion of electrons from the plasma with characteristic energies in the multi-kiloelectronvolt range—two orders of magnitude more than has been achieved so far in atoms and molecules. The basic spectroscopy of the coherent extreme ultraviolet radiation emerging from the light–plasma interaction allows us to probe this collective motion of charge with sub-200 as resolution. This is an important step towards attosecond control of charge dynamics in laser-driven plasma experiments.

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Figure 1: Schematic and principle of the experiment.
Figure 2: Waveform-dependent plasma emission spectra.
Figure 3: Attosecond metrology of the plasma emission.
Figure 4: Moiré patterns in plasma emission spectra.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank M. Ivanov for fruitful discussions, E. Lefebvre for providing the PIC code CALDER and R. Nuter for modifying this code to include the CE phase parameter. The 2D PIC calculations were performed using the computing resources of the ‘Grand Equipement National de Calcul Intensif’ (GENCI), under project number 2011-056057, and those of the ‘Centre de Calcul Recherche et Technologie’ (CCRT). Financial support was received from the Agence Nationale pour la Recherche through programme Chaire d’Excellence 2004 and ANR-09-JC-JC-0063 (UBICUIL). A.B. acknowledges financial support from the réseaux thématiques de recherche avancée—Triangle de la Physique and F.Q. from the European Research Council (ERC grant agreement no 240013).

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Author notes

  1. Antonin Borot and Arnaud Malvache: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire d’Optique Appliquée, ENSTA-Paristech, Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS, 91761 Palaiseau, France

    Antonin Borot, Arnaud Malvache, Xiaowei Chen, Aurélie Jullien & Rodrigo Lopez-Martens

  2. Laboratoire pour l’Utilisation des Lasers Intenses, Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS, 91128 Palaiseau, France

    Jean-Paul Geindre & Patrick Audebert

  3. Institut de la Lumière Extrême, ENSTA-Paristech, Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS, 91761 Palaiseau, France

    Gérard Mourou

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

    Fabien Quéré

Authors
  1. Antonin Borot
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  2. Arnaud Malvache
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  4. Aurélie Jullien
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  9. Rodrigo Lopez-Martens
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Contributions

The experimental set-up was designed by A.B. and R.L-M., the driving laser system was developed by A.J., X.C. and R.L-M., the experiments were carried out by A.B. and A.M., the theoretical work was done by A.M. and F.Q. All authors participated in the elaboration of the research project.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Arnaud Malvache.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Borot, A., Malvache, A., Chen, X. et al. Attosecond control of collective electron motion in plasmas. Nature Phys 8, 416–421 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2269

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