Clocking and controlling attosecond currents in a scanning tunnelling microscope

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the control of attosecond electron tunnelling currents in a scanning tunnelling microscope using two-colour laser pulses, enabling ultrafast charge dynamics imaging with high spatial resolution.

Contribution

It introduces a method to control attosecond currents in STM with waveform precision, revealing a three-step non-adiabatic tunnelling process and achieving sub-angstrom sensitivity.

Findings

Controlled attosecond tunnelling currents with 860 as burst duration.

Achieved 2 nm lateral spatial resolution under ambient conditions.

Revealed a three-step non-adiabatic tunnelling mechanism.

Abstract

Quantum tunnelling of electrons can be confined to the sub-cycle time scale of strong light fields, contributing decisively to the extreme time resolution of attosecond science. Because tunnelling also enables atomic-scale spatial resolution in scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM), integrating STM with light pulses has long been a key objective in ultrafast microscopy, spanning the picosecond and femtosecond domains, with first signatures of attosecond dynamics. However, while sub-cycle dynamics on the attosecond time scale are routinely controlled and determined with high precision, controlling the direction of attosecond currents and determining their duration have remained elusive in STM. Here, we induce STM tunnelling currents using two-colour laser pulses and dynamically control their direction, relying solely on the sub-cycle waveform of the pulses. Projecting our measurement data onto one-electron and many-body theory descriptions reveals a three-step transport process in the non-adiabatic tunnelling regime as the physical mechanism, with a theory-derived current burst duration of 860 as. Despite working under ambient conditions but free of thermal artifacts, we achieve sub-angstr\"om topographic sensitivity and a lateral spatial resolution of 2 nm. This unprecedented capability to directionally control attosecond bursts will enable triggering and imaging ultrafast charge dynamics at the spatio-temporal microscopy frontier of lightwave electronics.