Giant enhancement of attosecond tunnel ionization competes with disorder-driven decoherence in silicon
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| Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Formato: | Preprint |
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2025
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| author | Purschke, D. N. Vick, D. Cárdenas, A. Haram, N. Bastani, P. Gholam-Mirzaei, S. Mokhtari, S. Jelic, V. Chen, J. Canlas, J. Tordiff, J. Rahman, Md. W. Naumov, A. Yu. Villeneuve, D. M. Staudte, A. Salomons, M. Silva, R. E. F. Jiménez-Galán, Á. Vampa, G. |
| author_facet | Purschke, D. N. Vick, D. Cárdenas, A. Haram, N. Bastani, P. Gholam-Mirzaei, S. Mokhtari, S. Jelic, V. Chen, J. Canlas, J. Tordiff, J. Rahman, Md. W. Naumov, A. Yu. Villeneuve, D. M. Staudte, A. Salomons, M. Silva, R. E. F. Jiménez-Galán, Á. Vampa, G. |
| contents | High-harmonic generation (HHG) is a strong-field phenomenon that is sensitive to the attosecond dynamics of tunnel ionization and coherent transport of electron-hole pairs in solids. While the foundations of solid HHG have been established, a deep understanding into the nature of decoherence on sub-cycle timescales remains elusive. Furthermore, there is a growing need for tools to control ionization at the nanoscale. Here, we study HHG in silicon along a crystalline-to-amorphous (c-Si to a-Si) structural phase transition and observe a dramatic reshaping of the spectrum, with enhanced lower-order harmonic yield accompanied by quenching of the higher-order harmonics. Modelling the real-space quantum dynamics links our observations to a giant enhancement (>250 times) of tunnel ionization yield in the amorphous phase and a disorder-induced decoherence that damps the electron-hole polarization over approximately six lattice sites. HHG spectroscopy also reveals remnant order that was not apparent with conventional probes. Finally, we observe a rapid and targeted non-resonant laser annealing of amorphous silicon islands. Our results offer a unique insight into attosecond decoherence in strong-field phenomena, establish HHG spectroscopy as a probe of structural disorder, and pave the way for new opportunities in lightwave nanoelectronics. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_14678 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Giant enhancement of attosecond tunnel ionization competes with disorder-driven decoherence in silicon Purschke, D. N. Vick, D. Cárdenas, A. Haram, N. Bastani, P. Gholam-Mirzaei, S. Mokhtari, S. Jelic, V. Chen, J. Canlas, J. Tordiff, J. Rahman, Md. W. Naumov, A. Yu. Villeneuve, D. M. Staudte, A. Salomons, M. Silva, R. E. F. Jiménez-Galán, Á. Vampa, G. Materials Science High-harmonic generation (HHG) is a strong-field phenomenon that is sensitive to the attosecond dynamics of tunnel ionization and coherent transport of electron-hole pairs in solids. While the foundations of solid HHG have been established, a deep understanding into the nature of decoherence on sub-cycle timescales remains elusive. Furthermore, there is a growing need for tools to control ionization at the nanoscale. Here, we study HHG in silicon along a crystalline-to-amorphous (c-Si to a-Si) structural phase transition and observe a dramatic reshaping of the spectrum, with enhanced lower-order harmonic yield accompanied by quenching of the higher-order harmonics. Modelling the real-space quantum dynamics links our observations to a giant enhancement (>250 times) of tunnel ionization yield in the amorphous phase and a disorder-induced decoherence that damps the electron-hole polarization over approximately six lattice sites. HHG spectroscopy also reveals remnant order that was not apparent with conventional probes. Finally, we observe a rapid and targeted non-resonant laser annealing of amorphous silicon islands. Our results offer a unique insight into attosecond decoherence in strong-field phenomena, establish HHG spectroscopy as a probe of structural disorder, and pave the way for new opportunities in lightwave nanoelectronics. |
| title | Giant enhancement of attosecond tunnel ionization competes with disorder-driven decoherence in silicon |
| topic | Materials Science |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.14678 |