Transferring the attoclock technique to velocity map imaging

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how to adapt attosecond angular streaking techniques, previously used with COLTRIMS, to a velocity map imaging spectrometer, enabling high-repetition-rate measurements of strong-field ionization dynamics.

Contribution

The authors introduce a method to transfer attosecond streaking experiments from COLTRIMS to VMIS, allowing for high-repetition-rate, three-dimensional electron momentum measurements.

Findings

Successful tomographic reconstruction of 3D photoelectron momentum distributions.

Application to helium ionization with sub-10-fs pulses.

Enhanced measurement capabilities at 10 kHz repetition rate.

Abstract

Attosecond angular streaking measurements have revealed deep insights into the timing of tunnel ionization processes of atoms in intense laser fields. So far experiments of this type have been performed only with a cold-target recoil-ion momentum spectrometer (COLTRIMS). Here, we present a way to apply attosecond angular streaking experiments to a velocity map imaging spectrometer (VMIS) with few-cycle pulses at a repetition rate of 10 kHz and a high ionization yield per pulse. Three-dimensional photoelectron momentum distributions from strong-field ionization of helium with an elliptically polarized, sub-10-fs pulse were retrieved by tomographic reconstruction from the momentum space electron images and used for the analysis in the polarization plane.