Biomedical subjects

Kaoru Yamanouchi

Publications and source records attributed to Kaoru Yamanouchi.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Interferometric autocorrelation of an attosecond pulse train in the single-cycle regime.

We report on the direct observation of the phase locking of the attosecond pulse train (APT) via interferometric autocorrelation in the extreme ultraviolet region. APT is formed with Fourier synthesis of high-order harmonic fields of a femtosecond laser pulse. Time-of-flight mass spectra of N+, resulting from the Coulomb explosion of N2 absorbing two photons of APT, efficiently yield correlated signals of APT. The measured autocorrelation trace exhibits that the duration of the pulse should be only 1.3 periods of the extreme ultraviolet carrier frequency. A few interference fringes within the short pulse duration clearly show two types of symmetry, which ensure the phase locking between pulses in APT.

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PubMed2006

Open-loop and closed-loop control of dissociative ionization of ethanol in intense laser fields.

The relative yield of the C-O bond breaking with respect to the C-C bond breaking in ethanol cation C2H5OH+ is maximized in intense laser fields (10(13)-10(15) Wcm2) by open-loop and closed-loop optimization procedures. In the open-loop optimization, a train of intense laser pulses are synthesized so that the temporal separation between the first and last pulses becomes 800 fs, and the number and width of the pulses within a train are systematically varied. When the duration of 800 fs is filled with laser fields by increasing the number of pulses or by stretching all pulses in a triple pulse train, the relative yield of the C-O bond breaking becomes significantly large. In the closed-loop optimization using a self-learning algorithm, the four dispersion coefficients or the phases of 128 frequency components of an intense laser pulse are adopted as optimized parameters. From these optimization experiments it is revealed that the yield ratio of the C-O bond breaking is maximized as far as the total duration of the intense laser field reaches as long as approximately 1 ps and that the intermittent disappearance of the laser field within a pulse does not affect the relative yields of the bond breaking pathways.

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PubMed2006

Conclusive evidence of an attosecond pulse train observed with the mode-resolved autocorrelation technique.

We report on the direct observation of an attosecond pulse train with a mode-resolved autocorrelation technique. The chirp among the three harmonic fields is specified by analyzing two-photon above-threshold ionization spectra of electrons, resulting in a pulse duration that should be shorter than 450 as, which is, to our knowledge, the first determination of the chirp in the attosecond pulse train with an autocorrelation technique. These results will open the way to full characterization of an attosecond pulse train with its envelope.

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PubMed2005

Concerted and sequential Coulomb explosion processes of N2O in intense laser fields by coincidence momentum imaging.

The Coulomb explosion dynamics of N2O in intense laser fields (800 nm, 60 fs, approximately 0.16 PWcm2) is studied by the coincidence momentum imaging method. From the momentum correlation maps obtained for the three-body fragmentation pathway, N2O3+-->N++N++O+, the ultrafast structural deformation dynamics of N2O prior to the Coulomb explosion is extracted. It is revealed that the internuclear N-N and N-O distances stretch simultaneously as the bond angle less than approximately N-N-O decreases. In addition, two curved thin distributions are identified in the momentum correlation maps, and are interpreted well as those originating from the sequential dissociation pathway, N2O3+-->N++NO2+-->N++N++O+.

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PubMed2005

Probing the ultrafast nuclear motion in CS2 2+ in intense laser fields.

The temporal evolution of the nuclear wave packet of CS2 2+ formed in an intense laser field (60 fs, 0.13 PW/cm2) is traced in real time by the pump-and-probe technique combined with coincidence momentum imaging of the Coulomb explosion process, CS2 3+-->S+ + C+ + S+. The momentum correlations among the fragment ions obtained as a function of the pump-probe time delay between 133 fs to 3 ps reveal that the nuclear wave packet in CS2 2+ evolves not only along the anti-symmetric stretching coordinate to yield S+ and CS+ but also along the symmetric stretching coordinate leading to the simultaneous breaking of the two C-S bonds. The contribution from two different electronic states having bent and linear-type geometrical configurations is identified in the wave packet motion along the bending coordinate of CS2 2+.

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PubMed2002

The next frontier.

High-intensity lasers are opening up a new realm of light-matter interactions. In his Perspective, Yamanouchi reviews recent progress in this field, focusing on two intensity regimes: the Coulombic regime, which mostly deforms molecular structures and causes tunneling ionization, and the relativistic regime, where high-intensity lasers produce x-rays and high-energy particles and may cause nuclear fusion reactions. Efforts are under way to increase laser intensity further for accessing the next frontier.

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