Spatiotemporal coupling of attosecond pulses

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1817626116
• Publication Date: 2019-03-02T00:37:17Z
• Authors: Hampus Wikmark; Chen Guo; Jan Vogelsang; Peter W. Smorenburg; Hélène Coudert-Al...; Jan Lahl; Jasper Peschel; Piotr Rudawski; Hugo Dacasa; Stefanos Carlström; Sylvain Maclot; Mette B. Gaarde; Per Johnsson; Cord L. Arnold; Anne L’Huillier
• Keywords: Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph); Physical Sciences; 0103 physical sciences; FOS: Physical sciences; 01 natural sciences; Physics - Optics; Physics - Atomic Physics; Optics (physics.optics)

Significance In most optics textbooks, one writes the electric field describing an optical wave as a product of temporal and spatial amplitudes. This approximation often breaks down for short optical pulses. An example of such spatiotemporal coupling is chromatic aberrations, where the focal properties of the radiation vary with frequency over the pulse bandwidth. In this work, we point out significant chromatic aberrations of attosecond pulses, which depend on the geometry of the generation process. These aberrations are intrinsic to the generation process and need to be eliminated in applications requiring attosecond pulses to be focused over a small region.