6.2-GW tabletop attosecond light source

TL;DR

This paper reports a tabletop attosecond light source producing the highest energy and peak power pulses to date, enabling new nonlinear spectroscopy and metrology applications.

Contribution

It introduces a high-energy, high-peak-power tabletop attosecond pulse source using a stabilized two-color synthesizer with macroscopic phase-matching.

Findings

Generated 1.64 μJ, 263 as pulses with 6.2 GW peak power

Achieved highest pulse energy and peak power for tabletop sources

Enabled nonlinear effects experiments previously inaccessible

Abstract

The generation of attosecond pulses (1 as=10-18 s) has enabled real-time observation and manipulation of coherent electron dynamics, yet their low peak power has hindered the development of advanced attosecond pump-probe spectroscopy and attosecond nonlinear metrology. Here we overcome this limitation by generating 1.64 uJ, 263 as isolated attosecond pulses with a peak power of 6.2 GW, the highest pulse energy and peak power reported for a tabletop isolated attosecond source. This is achieved by combining a 2.1 TW, few-cycle (8.3 fs) two-color synthesizer with a loose focusing geometry that enables macroscopic phase-matching. The synthesizer features a stabilized carrier-envelope phase and an actively synchronized relative time delay between the two-color channels, ensuring high stability and reproducibility. This robust tabletop attosecond source enables nonlinear effect experiments that were previously inaccessible with lower-power IAPs, establishing a foundation for advanced attosecond spectroscopy and nonlinear metrology.