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The common description of strong-field light–matter interaction neglects the quantum-optical nature of the driving field. Now signatures of strong-field photoemission appear in electron energy spectra when driving with non-classical light.

There is interest in controlling particle beams using electric fields and using them in compact devices. Here the authors demonstrate guiding and splitting of charged particle (electron and ion) beams on a chip designed with special structures.

Shining intense laser pulses on an electron beam in an electron microscope corrects electron-optical spherical aberration, paving the way to using light to improve electron microscopy imaging.

Attosecond control of electrons in nanostructures requires resolving dynamics in the optical near field. Now, an experiment finds low-energy spectral stripes that track subcycle electron emission and allow the isolation of attosecond electron bursts.

Photoemission experiments demonstrate that the photon number statistics of the exciting light can be imprinted on the emitted electrons, allowing the controlled generation of classical or non-classical electron number statistics of free electrons.

A scalable nanophotonic electron accelerator with a high particle acceleration gradient and good beam confinement achieves an energy gain of 43%.

Electrons in a crystal can tunnel between energy bands when a strong electric field is switched on. It emerges that electron pathways interfere almost instantaneously, giving rise to ultra-short, pulsed emission of light. See Letter p.572

Two-colour modulation spectroscopy of laser field-driven electrons uncovers the suboptical-cycle strong-field emission dynamics from nanostructures with attosecond precision by measuring photoelectron spectra of electrons as function of the relative phase between the two colours.

Light-field control of real and virtual charge carriers in a gold–graphene–gold heterostructure is demonstrated, and used to create a logic gate for application in lightwave electronics.

Photoemission from nanometre-scale structures offer a route toward ultrafast light-field-driven electronic nanocircuits. Here, the authors use attosecond streaking spectroscopy for nanoscale characterization of near-fields in the vicinity of tapered gold nanowires.

In a tiny chip-based particle accelerator, phase-space control of the emerging electron beam demonstrates guiding over a length of nearly 80 micrometres and an indispensable prerequisite to electron acceleration to high energies.

Femtosecond laser pulses are sent to a graphene/SiC interface to investigate photoinduced charge transfer from graphene to SiC. A charge transfer time of 300 attoseconds is obtained via laser-pulse-duration-dependent saturation fluence determination.

In different applications the Gouy phase is used to describe broadband lasers, but new 3D measurements of the spatial dependence of a focused laser pulse show serious deviations from the Gouy phase.

The optical field inside a nanophotonic particle accelerator is revealed. To this end, the authors developed a field imaging technique for spatial and spectral resolution on the nanometer scale.

Even a few electrons confined to a tight space and time interval interact strongly, often causing issues for applications. The resulting repulsion has now been shown to allow strong electron–electron correlations, enabling shot-noise reduction.

Light-field-driven control of electrons in a conductor is demonstrated by inducing a current by laser pulses in graphene that is sensitive to the carrier-envelope phase.

We explore the transition from quantum to classical electrodynamics in light–matter interactions using a novel measurement-based approach. Our findings demonstrate that classical electron–photon couplings can be explained through weak measurement.