No Arabic abstract
This tutorial presents an introduction to the interaction of light and matter on the attosecond timescale. Our aim is to detail the theoretical description of ultra-short time-delays, and to relate these to the phase of extreme ultraviolet (XUV) light pulses and to the asymptotic phase-shifts of photoelectron wave packets. Special emphasis is laid on time-delay experiments, where attosecond XUV pulses are used to photoionize target atoms at well-defined times, followed by a probing process in real time by a phase-locked, infrared laser field. In this way, the laser field serves as a clock to monitor the ionization event, but the observable delays do not correspond directly to the delay associated with single-photon ionization. Instead, a significant part of the observed delay originates from a measurement induced process, which obscures the single-photon ionization dynamics. This artifact is traced back to a phase-shift of the above-threshold ionization transition matrix element, which we call the continuum-continuum phase. It arises due to the laser-stimulated transitions between Coulomb continuum states. As we shall show here, these measurement-induced effects can be separated from the single-photon ionization process, using analytical expressions of universal character, so that eventually the attosecond time-delays in photoionization can be accessed.
We report measurements of energy-dependent attosecond photoionization delays between the two outer-most valence shells of N$_2$O and H$_2$O. The combination of single-shot signal referencing with the use of different metal foils to filter the attosecond pulse train enables us to extract delays from congested spectra. Remarkably large delays up to 160 as are observed in N$_2$O, whereas the delays in H$_2$O are all smaller than 50 as in the photon-energy range of 20-40 eV. These results are interpreted by developing a theory of molecular photoionization delays. The long delays measured in N$_2$O are shown to reflect the population of molecular shape resonances that trap the photoelectron for a duration of up to $sim$110 as. The unstructured continua of H$_2$O result in much smaller delays at the same photon energies. Our experimental and theoretical methods make the study of molecular attosecond photoionization dynamics accessible.
We study the role of electron-electron correlation in the ground-state of Ne, as well as in photoionization dynamics induced by an attosecond XUV pulse. For a selection of central photon energies around 100 eV, we find that while the mean-field time-dependent Hartree-Fock method provides qualitatively correct results for the total ionization yield, the photoionization cross section, the photoelectron momentum distribution as well as for the time-delay in photoionization, electron-electron correlation is important for a quantitative description of these quantities.
We describe numerically the ionization process induced by linearly and circularly polarized XUV attosecond laser pulses on an aligned atomic target, specifically, the excited state Ne$^*(1s^22s^22p^5[{}^2text{P}^text{o}_{1/2}]3s[^1text{P}^o])$. We compute the excited atomic state by applying the time-dependent restricted-active-space self-consistent field (TD-RASSCF) method to fully account for the electronic correlation. We find that correlation-assisted ionization channels can dominate over channels accessible without correlation. We also observe that the rotation of the photoelectron momentum distribution by circularly polarized laser pulses compared to the case of linear polarization can be explained in terms of differences in accessible ionization channels. This study shows that it is essential to include electron correlation effects to obtain an accurate description of the photoelectron emission dynamics from aligned excited states.
We apply a recently proposed theoretical concept and numerical approach to obtain time delays in extreme ultraviolet (XUV) photoionization of an electron in a short- or long-range potential. The results of our numerical simulations on a space-time grid are compared to those for the well-known Wigner-Smith time delay and different methods to obtain the latter time delay are reviewed. We further use our numerical method to analyze the effect of a near-infrared streaking field on the time delay obtained in the numerical simulations.
Attosecond photoionization delays have mostly been interpreted within the single-particle approximation of multi-electron systems. The strong electron correlation between the photoionization channels associated with the 3p and 3s orbitals of argon presents an interesting arena where this single-particle approximation breaks down. Around photon energies of 42~eV, the 3s photoionization channel of argon experiences a ``Cooper-like minimum, which is exclusively the result of inter-electronic correlations with the 3p shell. Photoionization delays around this ``Cooper-like minimum have been predicted theoretically, but experimental verification has remained a challenge since the associated photoionization cross section is inherently very low. Here, we report the measurement of photoionization delays around the Cooper-like minimum that were acquired with the 100~kHz High-Repetition 1 laser system at the ELI-ALPS facility. We report relative photoionization delays reaching up to unprecedented values of 430 +/- 20~as, as a result of electron correlation. Our experimental results are in partial agreement with state-of-the-art theoretical results, but also demonstrate the need for additional theoretical developments.