Abstract

Over the last five decades laser technology has been able to compress optical pulse duration by several orders of magnitudes. During the past decade it has been established that the interaction of intense laser pulses with atoms or molecules can lead to the generation of XUV pulses and energetic electron pulses with attosecond duration¹ (1 attosecond=10^-18 second). This discovery has opened a window into a new time regime previously inaccessible. The advent of this new technology enables the investigation of new fields of time resolved studies in which the observation of fast electronic dynamics can be attained. The study of new areas of science, such as time resolved measurements of multi-electron dynamics and imaging molecular and nuclear dynamics, has consequently become accessible.

© 2011 Optical Society of America