Abstract
Attosecond physics offers new insights into ultrafast quantum phenomena involving electron dynamics on the fastest measurable timescales. The rapid progress in this field enables us to re-visit one of the most fundamental strong-field phenomena: field-induced tunnel ionization1,2,3. In this work, we employ high-harmonic generation to probe the electron wavefunction during field-induced tunnelling through a potential barrier. By using a combination of strong and weak driving laser fields, we modulate the atomic potential barrier on optical subcycle timescales. This induces a temporal interferometer between attosecond bursts originating from consecutive laser half-cycles. Our study provides direct insight into the basic properties of field-induced tunnelling, following the evolution of the electronic wavefunction within a temporal window of approximately 200 attoseconds.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank O. Raz, J. M. Dahlström and M. Yu. Ivanov for valuable discussions. N.D. is the incumbent of the Robin Chemers Neustein Professorial Chair. N.D. acknowledges the Minerva Foundation, the Israeli Science Foundation, the Crown Center of Photonics and the European Research Council for financial support. N.D. and O.S. acknowledge the German-Israeli Foundation. L.T. and O.S. acknowledge the support of DFG grant SM 292/2-3. F.M. and O.S. acknowledge the support of the DFG grant SM 292/3-1. D.S.B. and O.S. acknowledge the support of Einstein foundation project A-211-55 Attosecond Electron Dynamics.
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O.P., G.O., H.S., B.D.B. and A.J.U. performed the experiments. O.P., G.O., F.M., O.S. and N.D. analysed and interpreted the data. Simulations were implemented by O.P., V.S., A.G.H., D.S.B. and F.M. This project was supervised by N.D. and O.S. All authors discussed the results and wrote the paper.
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Pedatzur, O., Orenstein, G., Serbinenko, V. et al. Attosecond tunnelling interferometry. Nature Phys 11, 815–819 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3436
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3436
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