Abstract

The advent of attosecond pulse generation has had a tremendous impact on the temporal measurement technology. It has provided the means of temporally resolving dynamic processes evolving at atomic time scales. The technique for the attosecond pulse generation relies on the production of phase-locked harmonics in a non-linear medium using short laser pulses. A number of attosecond spectroscopic measurements have been performed using attosecond sources based on high-harmonic generation in gasesous media. However, the scope of experiments that can be performed with this source is rather limited because of the low number of generated XU V photons. Since the first observation of harmonic generation from solid targets using a tabletop laser system it became apparent that the interaction of an intense laser pulse with an overdense plasma constitutes an alternative route for the efficient production of phase-locked harmonics. Given the rapid technological advancements in the laser technology, tabletop lasers based on the Optical Parametric Chirped Pulse Amplification (OPCPA) technique delivering several tens of TW power with kHz repetition rate appear to be within our reach.

© 2007 IEEE