Biomedical subjects

Kenneth J Schafer

Publications and source records attributed to Kenneth J Schafer.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Generating single attosecond pulses via spatial filtering.

The first observation of isolated attosecond pulses by Hentschel [Nature 414, 509 (2001)] resulted from an experiment that left the exact mechanism of their generation unresolved. A complete simulation of the experiment reveals the reason for its success: single pulses were efficiently isolated from two or more generated pulses by spatial filtering in the far field. Our explanation suggests a new, simple paradigm for the production of isolated attosecond bursts. We show that this method can be used, in conjunction with carrier-envelope phase stabilization, to select single attosecond pulses by use of 10 fs driving pulses.

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PubMed2005

Amplitude and phase control of attosecond light pulses.

We report the generation, compression, and delivery on target of ultrashort extreme-ultraviolet light pulses using external amplitude and phase control. Broadband harmonic radiation is first generated by focusing an infrared laser with a carefully chosen intensity into a gas cell containing argon atoms. The emitted light then goes through a hard aperture and a thin aluminum filter that selects a 30-eV bandwidth around a 30-eV photon energy and synchronizes all of the components, thereby enabling the formation of a train of almost Fourier-transform-limited single-cycle 170 attosecond pulses. Our experiment demonstrates a practical method for synthesizing and controlling attosecond waveforms.

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PubMed2004

Strong field quantum path control using attosecond pulse trains.

We show that attosecond pulse trains have a natural application in the control of strong field processes. In combination with an intense infrared laser field, the pulse train can be used to microscopically select a single quantum path contribution to a process that would otherwise consist of several interfering components. We present calculations that demonstrate this by manipulating the time-frequency properties of high order harmonics at the single atom level. This quantum path selection can also be used to define a high resolution attosecond clock.

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PubMed2003

Ponderomotive shearing for spectral interferometry of extreme-ultraviolet pulses.

We propose a novel method for completely characterizing ultrashort pulses at extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) wavelengths by adapting the technique of spectral phase interferometry for direct electric-field reconstruction to this spectral region. Two-electron wave packets are coherently produced by photoionizing atoms with two time-delayed replicas of the XUV pulse. For one of the XUV pulses, photoionization occurs in the presence of a strong infrared pulse that ponderomotively shifts the binding energy, thereby providing the spectral shear needed for reconstruction of the spectral phase of the XUV pulse.

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PubMed2002

Space-time considerations in the phase locking of high harmonics.

The combination of several high order harmonics can produce an attosecond pulse train, provided that the harmonics are locked in phase to each other. We present calculations that evaluate the degree of phase locking that is achieved in argon and neon gases interacting with an intense, 50 fs laser pulse, for a range of macroscopic conditions. We find that phase locking depends on both the temporal and the spatial phase behavior of the harmonics, as determined by the interplay between the intrinsic dipole phase and the phase matching in the nonlinear medium. We show that, as a consequence of this, it is not possible to compensate for a lack of phase locking by purely temporal phase manipulation.

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