Attosecond optoelectronic field measurement in solids.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 31969568.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-019-14268-x and PMC identifier 6976600.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The sub-cycle interaction of light and matter is one of the key frontiers of inquiry made accessible by attosecond science. Here, we show that when light excites a pair of charge carriers inside of a solid, the transition probability is strongly localized to instants slightly after the extrema of the electric field. The extreme temporal localization is utilized in a simple electronic circuit to record the waveforms of infrared to ultraviolet light fields. This form of petahertz-bandwidth field metrology gives access to both the modulated transition probability and its temporal offset from the laser field, providing sub-fs temporal precision in reconstructing the sub-cycle electronic response of a solid state structure.