Brilliant source of 19.2 attosecond soft X-ray pulses below the atomic unit of time

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Ardana-Lamas, Fernando, Cousin, Seth L., Lignieres, Juliette, Biegert, Jens
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Ardana-Lamas, Fernando
Cousin, Seth L.
Lignieres, Juliette
Biegert, Jens
author_facet Ardana-Lamas, Fernando
Cousin, Seth L.
Lignieres, Juliette
Biegert, Jens
contents Electronic correlations occur on attosecond timescales, dictating how chemical bonds form, energy flows, and materials respond to light. Capturing such many-body processes requires light pulses of similar duration. The soft X-ray water window is vital because it encompasses the principle absorption edges of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen that underpin chemistry, biology, and materials science. However, generating and characterising isolated attosecond pulses that reach into the soft X-ray water window has remained a challenge. We addressed this need and report an isolated attosecond soft X-ray pulse with a duration of 19.2 attoseconds. This pulse reaches into the water window and is shorter than the atomic unit of time (24.2 as). The pulse is supported by a spectrum centred at 243 eV, extending up to 390 eV, and crossing the carbon K-edge with record photon flux: 4.8x10$^10$ photons per second overall and 4.1x10$^9$ photons per second in a 10% bandwidth at the carbon K-shell edge (284 eV). Such an extremely short soft X-ray pulse combines extreme temporal resolution with a coherent ultrabroadband soft X-ray spectrum, opening new opportunities to study electron dynamics in atoms, molecules, and solids, disentangle many-body interactions in correlated systems, and follow non-adiabatic energy flow in molecular complexes. Our results establish a new benchmark for table-top attosecond technology and lay the foundation for its widespread application in science and technology.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_04086
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Brilliant source of 19.2 attosecond soft X-ray pulses below the atomic unit of time
Ardana-Lamas, Fernando
Cousin, Seth L.
Lignieres, Juliette
Biegert, Jens
Optics
Electronic correlations occur on attosecond timescales, dictating how chemical bonds form, energy flows, and materials respond to light. Capturing such many-body processes requires light pulses of similar duration. The soft X-ray water window is vital because it encompasses the principle absorption edges of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen that underpin chemistry, biology, and materials science. However, generating and characterising isolated attosecond pulses that reach into the soft X-ray water window has remained a challenge. We addressed this need and report an isolated attosecond soft X-ray pulse with a duration of 19.2 attoseconds. This pulse reaches into the water window and is shorter than the atomic unit of time (24.2 as). The pulse is supported by a spectrum centred at 243 eV, extending up to 390 eV, and crossing the carbon K-edge with record photon flux: 4.8x10$^10$ photons per second overall and 4.1x10$^9$ photons per second in a 10% bandwidth at the carbon K-shell edge (284 eV). Such an extremely short soft X-ray pulse combines extreme temporal resolution with a coherent ultrabroadband soft X-ray spectrum, opening new opportunities to study electron dynamics in atoms, molecules, and solids, disentangle many-body interactions in correlated systems, and follow non-adiabatic energy flow in molecular complexes. Our results establish a new benchmark for table-top attosecond technology and lay the foundation for its widespread application in science and technology.
title Brilliant source of 19.2 attosecond soft X-ray pulses below the atomic unit of time
topic Optics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.04086