Electro-optic characterization of synthesized infrared-visible light fields.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 35236857.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-022-28699-6 and PMC identifier 8891359.
- 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 measurement and control of light field oscillations enable the study of ultrafast phenomena on sub-cycle time scales. Electro-optic sampling (EOS) is a powerful field characterization approach, in terms of both sensitivity and dynamic range, but it has not reached beyond infrared frequencies. Here, we show the synthesis of a sub-cycle infrared-visible pulse and subsequent complete electric field characterization using EOS. The sampled bandwidth spans from 700 nm to 2700 nm (428 to 110 THz). Tailored electric-field waveforms are generated with a two-channel field synthesizer in the infrared-visible range, with a full-width at half-maximum duration as short as 3.8 fs at a central wavelength of 1.7 µm (176 THz). EOS detection of the complete bandwidth of these waveforms extends it into the visible spectral range. To demonstrate the power of our approach, we use the sub-cycle transients to inject carriers in a thin quartz sample for nonlinear photoconductive field sampling with sub-femtosecond resolution.