Phase-Sensitive Control Of Molecular Dissociation Through Attosecond Pump/Strong-Field Mid-IR Probe Spectroscopy

Abstract

Our program developed key technologies for strong-field and attosecond physics, specifically towards the goal of sequentially controlling ionization and dissociation steps in the H2+ molecule using tightly synchronized few-fs EUV and few-cycle mid-IR pulses. We developed a cryocooled laser and optical parametric chirped pulse amplification based light pulse architecture, producing, by high harmonic generation, a 16-18 eV isolated single-femtosecond EUV pulse source, and by adiabatic difference frequency generation and optical parametric amplification, octavespanning energetic mid-IR pulses at 2.6 and 6 micron wavelengths. In addition, we developed improvements to the FROG-CRAB attosecond EUV pulse characterization method to aid precision attosecond spectroscopy experimentation, and a two-color EUV/mid-IR pump probe ionspectroscopy system, employing coherent wavelength multiplexing for tight synchronization between optical pulses, an actively stabilized Mach-Zender interferometer for scanning the delay between these pulses under vacuum, and a vacuum target chamber allowing the sequential use of electron and ion time-of-flight spectrometers for in situ EUV pulse characterization and ion spectroscopy of strong-field molecular dissociation dynamics. The scalability of this system in average power and repetition frequency will allow for a powerful strong-field physics platform.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 15, 2016
Accession Number
AD1008327

Entities

People

  • Jeffery Moses

Organizations

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force Research Laboratories
  • Difference Frequency
  • Dissociation
  • Dynamics
  • Electrons
  • Energy Bands
  • Frequency
  • Frequency Bands
  • Ionization
  • Lasers
  • Light Pulses
  • Optical Materials
  • Physics
  • Pulse Amplifiers
  • Repetition Rate
  • Spectroscopy
  • Standards

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Optical Physics and Photonics.

Technology Areas

  • Directed Energy
  • Microelectronics