Attosecond Technology

Light sources, metrology, applications

Welcome to the website for the Attosecond Technology project. The project aims to generate, diagnose and use isolated attosecond duration light pulses in new types of experiments to probe atomic and molecular systems on the attosecond timescale - with an emphasis on the development of the technology required to achieve these goals. This project was initially funded by a RCUK Basic Technology Grant (final report). Since Sept 2008 it has been funded by an EPSRC Translation Grant "Next Generation Attosecond Technology".

This website is intended to provide information about the aims and progress of the various parts of the project.

For information about the project please contact us.

Recent News

• Amplification of Impulsively Excited Molecular Rotational Coherence
  Molecular phase modulation (MPM) uses the rapid variation of refractive index in an ensemble of coherently vibrating or rotating molecules to spectrally modify radiation, allowing broadband radiation to be generated. Typically, coherent molecular motion is prepared using a rapidly changing pump field, or fields, which drive the dynamics. A key challenge is to control the phase of the molecular dynamics with respect to additional ultrafast optical sources. In a recent Physical Review Letter, researchers at the University of Oxford proposed and demonstrated a solution to this problem. The scheme involves preparation of high-coherence molecular dynamics which are phase-stable with respect to ultrashort pulses.
  More Information - Link to article

• Isolated Attosecond Pulses
  We have made the first measurements of isolated attosecond pulses in the UK and are one of only a handful of groups world-wide with this measurement capability. These short bursts of xuv light (~280 attoseconds duration, where 1 attosecond is 10^-18s ) were produced through the process of high harmonic generation and recorded using an attosecond 'streak' camera. In our previous work we had already made world-record measurements of molecular dynamics with attosecond temporal resolution using the PACER technique [Science 312, 424 (2006)], and we have made ground-breaking measurements of the carrier-envelope-phase (CEP) dependence of high harmonic generation that also is also concerned with attosecond timescale [Nature Physics 3, 52 - 57 (2007)]. However, these new results -- which are the fruits of a focused effort in the last year -- are the first time we have made a detailed characterisation of an isolated attosecond xuv pulse generated in our lab. This paves the way for new dynamic studies on an unprecedented timescale -- for example, with attosecond pulses at hand one can trace the motion of electrons in matter, leading to a deeper understanding of atomic behaviour with applications in chemistry, biology and materials sciences. Our future work is focused on the study of ultrafast dyanmics in nanoplasmonic structures on surfaces.

  Link to more detail