Bright 25-attosecond light pulses reach the one atomic unit of time

Abstract

Generating ever-shorter and brighter light pulses has long been a central pursuit in ultrafast science, as it benchmarks our ability to create and manipulate the coherence on the intrinsic timescale of sub-atomic electron motion. The current state-of-the-art in attosecond pulse generation reaches durations of 40-50 attoseconds (1 as = $10^{-18}$ seconds), produced via high-order harmonic generation (HHG) driven by secondary mid-infrared light sources. However, these sources often suffer from low stability and poor HHG conversion efficiency. In this work, we demonstrate the generation of 25$\pm$2 attosecond light pulses, a new world record for the shortest light pulse, driven by a post-compressed, industrial-grade Yb-based laser system. The resulting high-harmonic spectrum spans photon energies from 50 eV to 320 eV, covering the carbon K-edge, with a calibrated photon flux exceeding $10^{12}$ photons per second, approximately three orders of magnitude higher than previous studies. The pulse duration was characterized using an angle-resolved photoelectron streaking camera on helium atoms and systematically optimized through the use of dielectric filters of varying thicknesses to compensate the attochirp. Our study reaches the threshold of one atomic unit of time (24.2 attoseconds), the boundary between atomic and ionic physics, opening the door to resolving exciting ionic quantum dynamics with tabletop lasers.