Cascaded generation of isolated sub-10 attosecond half-cycle pulses

Abstract Sub-10 attosecond pulses (APs) with half-cycle electric fields provide exceptional options to detect and manipulate electrons in the atomic timescale. However, the availability of such pulses is still challenging. Here, we propose a method to generate isolated sub-10 attosecond half-cycle p...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:New journal of physics 2021-05, Vol.23 (5), p.53003
Main Authors: Shou, Yinren, Hu, Ronghao, Gong, Zheng, Yu, Jinqing, Chen, Jia erh, Mourou, Gerard, Yan, Xueqing, Ma, Wenjun
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attosecond pulses
Electric fields
Femtosecond pulses
isolated attosecond pulses
near-critical density plasmas
Particle in cell technique
particle-in-cell simulations
Perturbation
Physics
Relativistic plasmas
relativistically intense laser pulses
Thickness
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Summary:Abstract Sub-10 attosecond pulses (APs) with half-cycle electric fields provide exceptional options to detect and manipulate electrons in the atomic timescale. However, the availability of such pulses is still challenging. Here, we propose a method to generate isolated sub-10 attosecond half-cycle pulses based on a cascade process naturally happening in plasma. A backward AP is first generated by shooting a moderate overdense plasma with a one-cycle femtosecond pulse. After that, an electron sheet with the thickness of several nanometers is formed and accelerated forward by the electrostatic field. Then this electron sheet goes through unipolar perturbations driven by the tail of the first-stage AP instead of the initial laser pulse. As a result, a half-cycle sub-10 AP is cascadedly produced in the transmission direction. Two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations indicate that an isolated half-cycle pulse with the duration of 7.3 attoseconds can be generated from the cascaded scheme. Apart from a one-cycle driving pulse, such a scheme also can be realized with a commercial 100 TW 25 fs driving laser by shaping the pulse with a relativistic plasma lens in advance.
ISSN:1367-2630
1367-2630
DOI:10.1088/1367-2630/abf612