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arXiv · 2206.08895

Attosecond Field Emission

H. Y. Kim·M. Garg·S. Mandal·L. Seiffert·T. Fennel·E. Goulielmakis
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Abstract

Field-emission of electrons underlies major advances in science and technology, ranging from imaging the atomic-scale structure of matter to signal processing at ever-higher frequencies. The advancement of these applications to their ultimate limits of temporal resolution and frequency calls for techniques that can confine and probe the field emission on the sub-femtosecond time scale. We used intense, sub-cycle transients to induce optical field emission of electron pulses from tungsten nanotips and a weak replica of the same transient to directly probe the emission dynamics in real-time. Access into the temporal profile of the emerging electron pulses, including the duration $\tau$ = (53 as $\pm$ 5 as) and chirp, and the direct probing of nanoscale near-fields, open new prospects for research and applications at the interface of attosecond physics and nanooptics.

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H. Y. Kim, M. Garg, S. Mandal, L. Seiffert, T. Fennel, E. Goulielmakis. 2022-06-17. Attosecond Field Emission. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05577-1

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