Towards the complete phase profiling of attosecond wave packets

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel attosecond spectroscopic technique that measures and reconstructs complex spectral phase features of attosecond wave packets across broad energy ranges, surpassing existing methods.

Contribution

It demonstrates a new experimental approach using quantum beating to continuously map spectral phase features of attosecond pulses, including sharp fine-scale details.

Findings

Successfully reconstructed spectral phase modulations of attosecond pulse trains

Demonstrated continuous phase measurement across broad energy ranges

Validated the method with numerical simulations and a proof-of-principle experiment

Abstract

Realistic attosecond wave packets have complex profiles that, in dispersive conditions, rapidly broaden or split into multiple components. Such behaviors are encoded in sharp features of the wave packet spectral phase. Here, we exploit the quantum beating between one- and two-photon transitions in an attosecond photoionization experiment to measure the photoelectron spectral phase continuously across a broad energy range. Supported by numerical simulations, we demonstrate that this experimental technique is able to reconstruct sharp fine-scale features of the spectral phase, continuously as a function of energy and across the full spectral range of the pulse train, thus beyond the capabilities of existing attosecond spectroscopies. In a proof-of-principle experiment, we retrieve the periodic modulations of the spectral phase of an attosecond pulse train due to the individual chirp of each harmonic.