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Pawel Wnuk

Publications and source records attributed to Pawel Wnuk.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Attosecond correlated electron dynamics at C$_{60}$ giant plasmon resonance

Fullerenes have unique physical and chemical properties that are associated with their delocalized conjugated electronic structure. Among them, there is a giant ultra-broadband - and therefore ultrafast - plasmon resonance, which for C$_{60}$ is in the extreme-ultraviolet energy range. While this peculiar resonance has attracted considerable interest for the potential downscaling of nanoplasmonic applications such as sensing, drug delivery and photocatalysis at the atomic level, its electronic character has remained elusive. The ultrafast decay time of this collective excitation demands attosecond techniques for real-time access to the photoinduced dynamics. Here, we uncover the role of electron correlations in the giant plasmon resonance of C$_{60}$ by employing attosecond photoemission chronoscopy. We find a characteristic photoemission delay of up to 200 attoseconds pertaining to the plasmon that is purely induced by coherent large-scale correlations. This result provides novel insight into the quantum nature of plasmonic resonances, and sets a benchmark for advancing nanoplasmonic applications.

physics.atom-ph

Suppression of individual peaks in two-colour high harmonic generation

This work investigates the suppression of individual harmonics, simultaneously affecting specific even and odd orders in the high-harmonic spectra generated by strongly tailored, two-colour, multi-cycle laser pulses in neon. The resulting spectra are systematically studied as a function of the electric-field shape in a symmetry-broken ($ω$-$2ω$) and symmetry-preserved ($ω$-$3ω$) configuration. The peak suppression is reproduced by macroscopic strong-field approximation calculations and is found to be unique to symmetry-broken fields ($ω$-$2ω$). Additionally, semi-classical calculations further corroborate the observation and reveal their underlying mechanism, where a nontrivial spectral interference between subsequent asymmetric half-cycles is found to be responsible for the suppression.

physics.optics

Non-adiabatic ponderomotive effects in photoemission from nanotips in intense mid-infrared laser fields

Transient near-fields around metallic nanotips drive many applications, including the generation of ultrafast electron pulses and their use in electron microscopy. We have investigated the electron emission from a gold nanotip driven by mid-infrared few-cycle laser pulses. We identify a low-energy peak in the kinetic energy spectrum and study its shift to higher energies with increasing laser intensities from $1.7$ to $3.7\cdot10^{11} \mathrm{W}/\mathrm{cm}^2$. The experimental observation of the upshift of the low-energy peak is compared to a simple model and numerical simulations, which show that the decay of the near-field on a nanometer scale results in non-adiabatic transfer of the ponderomotive potential to the kinetic energy of emitted electrons and in turn to a shift of the peak. We derive an analytic expression for the non-adiabatic ponderomotive shift, which, after the previously found quenching of the quiver motion, completes the understanding of the role of inhomogeneous fields in strong-field photoemission from nanostructures.

physics.optics