Attosecond technology and science

The generation of attosecond pulses has been the result of tremendous efforts and advances in the field of the interaction of ultrashort intense laser pulses with matter. Nowadays, the electric field waveform of femtosecond pulses can be precisely controlled and used to synthesize and measure the evolution in time of attosecond pulses. The quest for increasing photon fluxes in the extreme-ultraviolet region (XUV) and the requirement of a complete characterization of complex attosecond waveforms are stimulating the development of new technological approaches that should make feasible XUV sources combining attosecond pulse duration, high energy, and high repetition rate. The use of such sources with state-of-the-art techniques for the measurement of the momentum of charged particles will allow a detailed description of photoionization and photodissociation processes. Advances in selection of the initial quantum state and structure of molecules will open the way for the extension of attosecond spectroscopy to complex molecules. The first applications of attosecond pulses allowed the investigation of electron dynamics with a resolution close to the atomic unit of time. Simple systems such as helium and noble gases were investigated using trains and isolated pulses. These experiments represent benchmarks to elucidate the response of atoms on the typical electron timescale. © 2006 IEEE.