Spatiotemporal isolation of attosecond soft X-ray pulses in the water window.

Silva, Francisco; Teichmann, Stephan M; Cousin, Seth L; Hemmer, Michael; Biegert, Jens · Nat Commun · 2015

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Attosecond pulses at photon energies that cover the principal absorption edges of the building blocks of materials are a prerequisite for time-resolved probing of the triggering events leading to electronic dynamics such as exciton formation and annihilation. We demonstrate experimentally the isolation of individual attosecond pulses at the carbon K-shell edge (284 eV) in the soft X-ray water window with pulse duration below 400 as and with a bandwidth supporting a 30-as pulse duration. Our approach is based on spatiotemporal isolation of long-wavelength-driven harmonics and validates a straightforward and scalable approach for robust and reproducible attosecond pulse isolation.