Abstract

The physical processes involving the electron motion inside the atoms and the molecules naturally occur in the attosecond temporal domain. The techniques to investigate these processes as well as to control them require the ability to interact in the same temporal domain. The light pulses are ideal tools to this purpose. In the last few years there were reported experiments demonstrating the generation of trains as well as isolated attosecond pulses [1]. Different schemes are known, based on the nonlinear interaction of few-femtosecond laser pulses in the near or mid infrared with gas or solid targets. As a general feature, the mechanisms exploited so far generate attosecond pulses which are not at their transform limited duration. This put forward need to correct the spectral phase of the pulse while keeping a fairly good transmittance, as the pulses are generally weak.

© 2009 IEEE