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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Attosecond pulse isolation via intense laser field synthesis

C. R. J. Fitzpatrick, J. P. Kennedy, B. Dromey, and M. Yeung

  • Centre for Light-Matter Interaction, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, United Kingdom

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Phys. Rev. Research 6, L012020 – Published 23 January, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.6.L012020

Abstract

Precisely synthesized driving fields for relativistic laser-plasma interactions are shown, using particle in cell simulations, to allow for the absolute control over the temporal structure, and efficiency, of emitted attosecond pulse trains. Using a two-color driving field with an off-harmonic frequency as the second color exploits the sensitivity of the generation mechanism to the exact waveform seen by the plasma electrons. Fine control over the relative phase between the two colors, combined with the incommensurate nature of the driving field, breaks the symmetry of the input wave and allows for the selective enhancement of individual pulses in the resultant attosecond pulse train. Our results show that, by suppression of the surrounding pulses in the train, it is possible to use this technique to generate a single isolated attosecond pulse without compromising the resultant intensity as is common in other temporal gating schemes and how it can be combined with the noncollinear gating mechanism to further improve pulse isolation.

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Phys. Rev. Research 6, L012020– Published 23 January, 2024
  • Received 4 April 2023
  • Accepted 14 December 2023
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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