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Register a new userFemtosecond streaking in ambient air
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We demonstrate a novel method to measure the temporal evolution of electric fields with optical frequencies. Our technique is based on the detection of transient currents in air plasma. These directional currents result from sub-cycle ionization of air with a short pump pulse, and the steering of the released electrons with the pulse to be sampled. We assess the validity of our approach by comparing it with different state-of-the-art laser-pulse characterization techniques. Notably, our method works in ambient air and facilitates a direct measurement of the field waveform, which can be viewed in real time on an oscilloscope in the exact same way as a radio frequency signal.
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The ability to measure and control the carrier envelope phase (CEP) of few-cycle laser pulses is of paramount importance for both frequency metrology and attosecond science. Here, we present a phase meter relying on the CEP-dependent photocurrents induced by circularly polarized few-cycle pulses focused between electrodes in ambient air. The new device facilitates compact single-shot, CEP measurements under ambient conditions and promises CEP tagging at repetition rates orders of magnitude higher than most conventional CEP detection schemes as well as straightforward implementation at longer wavelengths.
Streaking of photoelectrons with optical lasers has been widely used for temporal characterization of attosecond extreme ultraviolet pulses. Recently, this technique has been adapted to characterize femtosecond x-ray pulses in free-electron lasers with the streaking imprinted by farinfrared and Terahertz (THz) pulses. Here, we report successful implementation of THz streaking for time-stamping of an ultrashort relativistic electron beam of which the energy is several orders of magnitude higher than photoelectrons. Such ability is especially important for MeV ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) applications where electron beams with a few femtosecond pulse width may be obtained with longitudinal compression while the arrival time may fluctuate at a much larger time scale. Using this laser-driven THz streaking technique, the arrival time of an ultrashort electron beam with 6 fs (rms) pulse width has been determined with 1.5 fs (rms) accuracy. Furthermore, we have proposed and demonstrated a non-invasive method for correction of the timing jitter with femtosecond accuracy through measurement of the compressed beam energy, which may allow one to advance UED towards sub-10 fs frontier far beyond the ~100 fs (rms) jitter.
Properties of filaments ignited by multi-millijoule, 90-fs mid-IR pulses centered at 3.9 {mu}m are examined experimentally by monitoring plasma density and losses as well as spectral dynamics and beam profile evolution at different focusing strengths. By softening the focusing from strong (f=0.25 m) to loose (f=7 m) we observe a shift from plasma assisted filamentation to filaments with low plasma density. In the latter case, filamentation manifests itself by beam self-symmetrization and spatial self-channeling. Spectral dynamics in the case of loose focusing is dominated by the non-linear Raman frequency downshift, which leads to the overlap with the CO2 resonance in the vicinity of 4.2 {mu}m. The dynamic CO2 absorption in the case of 3.9-{mu}m filaments with their low plasma content is the main mechanism of energy losses and either alone or together with other nonlinear processes contributes to the arrest of intensity.
We experimentally demonstrate energy exchange between a delay-tuned femtosecond beam and two delay-fixed ones as they spatiotemporally overlapped and experienced filamentation in air. The energy exchange process in the relative time delay is dramatically elongated up to 40 ps in the presence of plasma grating, indicating that filamentary beams coupling may be an effective method for filament control.
We report experiments on the generation of third and fifth harmonics of millijoule-level, tightly focused, femtosecond laser pulses at 2.2 {mu}m wavelength in air. The measured ratio of yields of the third and fifth harmonics in our setup is about 2 cdot 10-4. This result contradicts the recent suggestion that the Kerr effect in air saturates and changes sign in ultra-intense optical fields.
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