Femtosecond and Attosecond Spectroscopy in the XUV Regime Arvinder S
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IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 18, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012 351 Femtosecond and Attosecond Spectroscopy in the XUV Regime Arvinder S. Sandhu and Xiao-Min Tong (Invited Paper) Abstract—Attosecond-duration, fully coherent, extreme- [7], [8]. Time-resolved experiments with these laser-generated ultraviolet (XUV) photon bursts obtained through laser XUV pulses provide new insights into the electronic processes high-harmonic generation have opened up new possibilities in the in atoms, molecules, and surfaces [1]–[6], [9]–[15]. study of atomic and molecular dynamics. We discuss experiments elucidating some of the interesting energy redistribution mecha- Strictly speaking, apart from attosecond XUV pulses, the im- nisms that follow the interaction of a high-energy photon with a plementation of ultrafast XUV spectroscopy also requires pre- molecule. The crucial role of synchronized, strong-field, near-IR cisely synchronized strong field IR laser pulses. In fact, many laser pulses in XUV pump–probe spectroscopy is highlighted. We new experimental possibilities have emerged from this marriage demonstrate that near-IR pulses can in fact be used to modify between conventional strong-field (IR) and weak-field (XUV) the atomic structure and control the electronic dynamics on attosecond timescales. Our measurements show that the Gouy spectroscopic techniques. We refer to this entire class of exper- phase slip in the interaction region plays a significant role in these iments as ultrafast XUV+IR spectroscopy. attosecond experiments. We perform precision measurement of In the framework of XUV+IR spectroscopy, we will focus interferences between strong field-induced Floquet channels to on the developments along two main directions. One is the extract the intensity and phase dependence of photoionization utilization of XUV pulses for initiation of ultrafast chemical dynamics. Applications of emerging table-top ultrafast XUV sources in the study of core electron dynamics are also discussed. dynamics through inner-valence/multielectron excitations. The resulting femtosecond electronic and nuclear processes in such Index Terms—Atomic physics, attosecond, femtosecond, experiments are probed using time-delayed IR pulses. The other extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) spectroscopy., high harmonics. direction represents the use of attosecond duration XUV pulse trains to study and control the transient, strong field induced modification of the electronic structure of atoms. In these ex- I. INTRODUCTION periments, the XUV and IR fields are simultaneously present LTRAFAST atomic and molecular science has undergone and their relative delay is precisely controlled on attosecond U quite a revolution in the last few years. One of the ma- timescale. jor changes has been brought about by the arrival of ultra- A brief outline of this paper is as follows. In section II, we fast table-top extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) sources in the form show that ultrashort XUV excitation is a precursor of novel of attosecond-duration, high-frequency, coherent light pulses. excited-state dynamics. The role of IR pulses in pump–probe The birth of a new subfield, being termed as “attosecond sci- measurement of XUV excited electronic and nuclear wavepack- ence,” has been made possible by advances in laser technology, ets is investigated in Section III. Experimental methods are dis- detection methods, and theoretical calculations [1]. The excite- cussed in Section IV. Section V and VI focus on the attosecond ment in this field arises from the possibility of observation and measurements of XUV+IR ionization dynamics. The signifi- control at the level of electrons [2]–[6], which typically undergo cance of the Gouy phase slip and advantages of spatial imaging dynamics on the timescale of few-hundred attoseconds. of focal volume are demonstrated. We use the Floquet formal- The phenomenon underlying ultrashort XUV pulses is the ism to interpret the behavior of atomic structures in strong fields. extreme nonlinear interaction of intense near-IR laser pulses We show that ion-yield oscillations encode the IR field strength (>1014 W·cm−2 ) with atoms, which leads to the generation of dependence of transition matrix elements. Finally, we discuss laser high harmonics extending up to hundreds of electronvolts the new experimental possibilities in study of multielectron and core-electron dynamics. Manuscript received December 27, 2010; revised March 8, 2011; accepted II. ULTRASHORT XUV PULSE-INITIATED DYNAMICS March 8, 2011. Date of publication May 19, 2011; date of current version January 31, 2012. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Most physical and chemical phenomena occur through the under Grant PHY-0955274. photoexcitation and subsequent evolution of electronic and nu- A. S. Sandhu is with the Department of Physics and College of Optical clear wavepackets [16]. Ultrashort light pulses in the IR, visi- Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85737 USA (e-mail: sandhu@ physics.arizona.edu). ble and UV have been extensively used to uncover the nature X.-M. Tong is with the Center for Computational Sciences, University of and dynamics of excited molecular states [17]. However, most Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8573, Japan (e-mail: [email protected]). time-resolved studies of wavepacket dynamics have been lim- Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. ited to low-lying excited states, only a few electronvolt above Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSTQE.2011.2136332 the ground state. In contrast, many common processes in nature 1077-260X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE 352 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 18, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012 Fig. 2. (a) Intense near-IR femtosecond laser pulse focused on rare gas atoms Fig. 1. Inner-shell photoionization and correlated two-electron shake-up pho- leads to XUV emission. (b) Spectral output is in the form of odd harmonics toionization (b) either case leads to formation of highly excited molecular ions extending to hundreds of electronvolts. (c) Generation mechanism is a three that undergo fast fragmentation along multiple pathways. step process involving tunneling, acceleration and recollision of electronic wavepacket with core (d) Laser driven recollision mechanism repeats every half-cycle leading to synchronized attosecond duration XUV bursts. (e.g., solar irradiation of atmospheric molecules) lead to forma- tion of excited molecules high above the ground state (>20 eV). ciently generated in the photon-energy regime of 10–100 eV [see Fig. 1(a) illustrates the XUV photon initiated inner-shell ion- Fig. 2 (b)]. This is highly appropriate for probing excited state ization (solid line) and two-electron shake-up processes (dotted dynamics as most molecules exhibit peak oscillator strengths line) in a diatomic molecule generically labeled as A2 .Theterm in this photon-energy regime [19]. Third, the three step mecha- “shake-up” here broadly refers to the electronic processes where nism [20], [21] [see Fig. 2(c)] ensures the phase coherence and excitation accompanies the ionization. As seen from Fig. 1, the perfect synchronization between XUV attosecond pulse trains XUV interaction forms highly excited molecules in the multiple (APTs) (or single attosecond pulses) [22]–[26] and the driv- continua above the single or even double ionization threshold. ing IR pulses. This intrinsic subcycle synchronization allows The energy relaxation dynamics of these states often involves XUV+IR pump–probe experiments that can time resolve what fragmentation along steep potential energy surfaces (PES) such happens in the attoseconds or first few femtoseconds of photon– as those depicted in Fig. 1(b). The evolution of such highly ex- molecule interaction. cited states presents an interesting realm that involves correlated As an opening example, we discuss the fragmentation dy- electronic and nuclear motion on ultrafast timescales. namicsofN2 molecule, which represents the first measurement However, the real-time dynamics of highly excited molecules of XUV pulse initiated femtosecond molecular dynamics [15]. have remained largely unexplored. Conventional synchrotrons In this experiment, XUV pulse is used to create a localized could not directly emphasize the “dynamics” due to the lack ionic wavepacket ∼40 eV above the ground state [see Figs. 1 of time resolution. Similarly, the multiphoton/strong-field ap- and 3(a)]. Using photofragment imaging technique discussed in proach with IR/visible pulses is inadequate, as it preferentially Section IV, we observed two main product channels. The inner- 2 2 2 3 targets the loosely bound electrons and cannot directly access valence (2σg 2σu ) ionized molecules fragment into N(2s 2p ) inner electrons. and N+ (2s2 2p2 ). More importantly, certain excited molecular +∗ + Fortunately, the table-top XUV pulses obtained through laser ions (N2 ) evolve into ground state N and an excited neutral high-harmonic generation (HHG) provide an excellent source atom that has loosely bound (n = 3) electron attached to it. The in terms of photon energy and time resolution required to probe second excitation and fragmentation path is shown as lower po- fast electron–electron and electron–ion dynamics. In Fig. 2, we tential energy curve in Fig. 3(a) and it represents an interesting have summarized the essential aspects of laser HHG. For a and unexplored relaxation channel. detailed discussion of this process the reader is referred to an Using a time-delayed