FEMTOSECOND–SCALE OPTICS Edited by Anatoli V. Andreev Femtosecond–Scale Optics Edited by Anatoli V. Andreev Published by InTech Janeza Trdine 9, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia Copyright © 2011 InTech All chapters are Open Access distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which permits to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work in any medium, so long as the original work is properly cited. After this work has been published by InTech, authors have the right to republish it, in whole or part, in any publication of which they are the author, and to make other personal use of the work. Any republication, referencing or personal use of the work must explicitly identify the original source. As for readers, this license allows users to download, copy and build upon published chapters even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. Notice Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors and not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the published chapters. The publisher assumes no responsibility for any damage or injury to persons or property arising out of the use of any materials, instructions, methods or ideas contained in the book. Publishing Process Manager Petra Nenadic Technical Editor Teodora Smiljanic Cover Designer Jan Hyrat Image Copyright design36, 2011. Used under license from Shutterstock.com First published October, 2011 Printed in Croatia A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com Additional hard copies can be obtained from orders@intechweb.org Femtosecond – Scale Optics, Edited by Anatoli V. Andreev p. cm. ISBN 978-953-307-769-7 free online editions of InTech Books and Journals can be found at www.intechopen.com Contents Preface IX Part 1 Femtosecond-Time-Scale Physics 1 Chapter 1 Magnetization Dynamic with Pulsed X Rays 3 Christine Boeglin Chapter 2 Electron Acceleration Using an Ultrashort Ultraintense Laser Pulse 23 Eisuke Miura Chapter 3 Coherent Laser Manipulation of Ultracold Molecules 53 Elena Kuznetsova, Robin Côté and S. F. Yelin Chapter 4 Fast Charged Particles and Super-Strong Magnetic Fields Generated by Intense Laser Target Interaction 87 Vadim Belyaev and Anatoly Matafonov Chapter 5 Physics of Quasi-Monoenergetic Laser-Plasma Acceleration of Electrons in the Blowout Regime 113 Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Bradley A. Shadwick, Arnaud Beck and Erik Lefebvre Chapter 6 Time-Resolved Laser Spectroscopy of Semiconductors - Physical Processes and Methods of Analysis 139 T. Brudevoll, A. K. Storebo, O. Skaaring, C. N. Kirkemo, O. C. Norum, O. Olsen and M. Breivik Chapter 7 Lasers in Atomic Collisions, Cold Plasma and Cold Atom Physics 169 R. Cabrera-Trujillo, J. Jiménez-Mier and A. M. Juárez Chapter 8 Time Resolved Spectroscopy with Femtosecond X-Ray Pulses 203 Enikoe Seres and Christian Spielmann VI Contents Chapter 9 Ultrafast Time-Resolved Spectroscopy 227 László Nánai, Szabolcs Beke and Koji Sugioka Chapter 10 Interaction of Atom With Laser Pulses of Intra-Atomic Field Strength 247 A.V. Andreev, S.Yu. Stremoukhov and O.A.Shoutova Part 2 Time Resolved Laser Spectroscopy and Coherent Control Techniques 285 Chapter 11 Generation and Detection of Mesoscopic Pulsed States of Light for Quantum Information 287 Alessia Allevi and Maria Bondani Chapter 12 Ultrafast Photoelectric Effect in Oxide Single Crystals and Films 307 Hao Ni and Kun Zhao Chapter 13 Quantum Key Distribution 335 Philip Chan, Itzel Lucio-Martínez, Xiaofan Mo and Wolfgang Tittel Chapter 14 Optical Properties of Quantum-Confined Semiconductor Structures Driven by Strong Terahertz Fields 355 Tong-Yi Zhang and Wei Zhao Chapter 15 Laser Pulses Applications in Photovoltaic Effect 381 Kui-juan Jin, Chen Ge, Hui-bin Lu and Guo-zhen Yang Chapter 16 Integrating Detectors for Photoacoustic Imaging 399 Hubert Grün, Thomas Berer, Karoline Felbermayer, Peter Burgholzer, Markus Holotta, Gerhard Zangerl, Robert Nuster and Günther Paltauf Chapter 17 Photoemission Spectroscopy at Liquid Microbeams with a High Harmonics Table top Radiation Source 421 Bernd Abel Preface The studies of ultrashort laser pulse interactions with single atoms, molecules, nanoparticles and condensed matter is a hot topic of modern physics, since the obtained results stimulate the development of fundamental principles of light-matter interaction and, at the same time, find the wide area of practical applications. This volume contains the contributions devoted both to the discussion of general principles and fundamental experiments, as well as the different practical applications. The content of the volume has been divided into the two sections, however, this division is rather formal because the most of papers concern with the general problems and simultaneously provide the elegant proposals of practical applications. The methods of ultrashort high-energy X ray pulse producing based on the use of femtosecond laser pulses are discussed and the available parameters are compared with the X-ray pulse parameters obtained in the large facilities like as Synchrotron or X-ray Free electron lasers (X-FEL) (chapter 1). An overview of the modern status of research on laser-driven plasma-based electron acceleration is presented. The basic principles, recent achievements, and possible applications are discussed in chapter 2. It is demonstrated that the use of well-controlled laser fields offer an exquisite control tool over atomic and molecular internal and external states, including laser cooling and trapping, coherent manipulation of atomic quantum states and in particular various techniques used for quantum information applications, atomic spectroscopy (chapter 3). Progress in the technology of short laser pulse amplification made short- pulse, high-repetition-rate, multi-terawatt laser facilities available to a large community of researchers. These new instruments revolutionized experiments in nonlinear optics, and enabled a design of compact, plasma-based sources of x-rays, electrons, ions, etc. The physics of the processes occurring in plasma produced by ultrahigh intensity femtosecond laser pulses is discussed in chapters 4 and 5. Time- resolved laser spectroscopy as an important method for extracting optical and transport parameters of semiconductors and semiconductor nanostructures is discussed in chapter 6. The novel applications of laser methods in atomic collisions, cold plasmas and cold atom physics are discussed in chapter 7. The review the current progress of time resolved x-ray spectroscopy based on the use of femtosecond and attosecond x-ray pulses is given in chapter 8. Some examples of successful applications of the ultrafast time resolved spectroscopy methods in material science and solid state X Preface physics are discussed in chapter 9. The new approach in the theory of light-atom interaction is discussed in chapter 10. The main benefits of the proposed approach are in the following. Firstly, the approach is free of any limitations on the laser field strength (in comparison with the intra-atomic field strength). Secondly, the arbitrary orientation of atomic electron angular momentum and polarization vector of electromagnetic wave is the primordial concept of approach. The papers of the volume reflect the results of research on the application of pulsed- light sources in optical communication, quantum information processing (chapter 11), and quantum networks (chapter 13). The recent achievements in the study of the fast photoresponse of superconductor materials for detecting the ultrafast laser pulse are discussed in chapter 12. The techniques of THz pulse generation with the help of ultrashort laser pulses are discussed in chapter 14. The brief description of currently most important applications of laser pulses in photovoltaic effect is given in chapter 15. The authors concentrate on a description of recent developments and survey the current state of affairs regarding the physics and the methods currently used for analyzing the experiments. The chapter 16 is devoted to the photoacoutic tomography as a new imaging method which is attractive for medicine and biology because it is capable to provide a three dimensional image of electromagnetic absorption properties of biological tissue – which is dependent of the used wavelength - without ionizing radiation. The liquid phase photoelectron spectroscopy with high time-resolution realized with the combination of powerful technologies such as photoelectron spectroscopy near volatile liquid interfaces in vacuum, ultrafast pump-probe spectroscopy, and table-top high harmonics generation of soft X-ray radiation is discussed in chapter 17. Anatoli V. Andreev Professor of Physics M.V.Lomonosov Moscow State University Moscow, Russia [...]... the 10 –6 - 10 -3 eV range, of a few ps for spin-orbit energies in the 10 –2 10 -1 eV range, and of a few fs for the inter-atomic exchange energy of ~ 5 .10 -1 eV Fig 6 Transient remanent longitudinal MOKE signal of a Ni(20 nm)/MgF2 (10 0 nm) film for 7 mJ /cm2 pump fluence [Bea1996] Magnetization Dynamic with Pulsed X Rays 13 From the discovery of subpicosecond demagnetization over a decade ago [Beau1996]... ultrashort X-ray pulses produced by slicing thus provides a strongly reduced flux of 10 4 photons s -1 mrad-2mm-2per 0 .1% BW, compared to 10 6 photons s -1 mrad-2mm-2per 0 .1% BW using the single electron bunch The static measurements using all the bunches we can typically expect at 700 eV a flux of 10 13 photons s -1 mrad-2mm-2per 0 .1% BW The reduction of the flux us thus extremely important when performing time... direction) the in-plane spins are here not observable at t > t0 17 Magnetization Dynamic with Pulsed X Rays a) c) t< to pump-probe b) d) t > to , pump-probe 18 Femtosecond–Scale Optics 3 31. 0x10 30.5 30.0 29.5 0 50 10 0 15 0 200 250 e) t < to for the black line (image c), while t > to in case of the red line (image d) Absice scale is in pixel [Boe2 011 ] Fig 8 (a and b) X-PEEM magnetic contrast images taken in... Kras2005, Kuc2004, Vog2005, Vogel 2005, Fuk2006, Vog2008, Hey2 010 , Uhl2 011 ] Magnetization Dynamic with Pulsed X Rays 5 Fig 1 Magnetic response of the x-component of the magnetization (bright areas are magnetized to the right, dark areas to the left) in a permalloy platelet of 16 · 32 µm2 size and 10 nm thickness for three different field amplitudes I (1. 5 Oe), II (2.0 Oe) and III (2.5 Oe) (a) XMCD–PEEM snapshot... obtained using monocromatized X rays of 10 0 fs duration, obtained by using a single circularly polarized X- 12 Femtosecond–Scale Optics ray pulse of 10 11 photons The polarization was obtained by focusing the X rays thought a thin Cobalt ferromagnetic film Different delays in the pump probe experiment give theme a serie of real magnetic domain images and reveal that 1 ps after the IR laser excitation the... magnetic worm domain pattern recorded with a single LCLS X-ray pulse employing XMCD at the Co L3 edge as contrast The circular field of view is 1. 5 µm in diameter [Lün2 011 ] Using the higher energies of the free-electron lasers at Stanford (LCLS) J Lüning et al [Lün2 011 ] performed similar experiments on CoPd alloys using the spectral range of relevance (CoL3) They achieved for the first time single shot magnetic... X-ray sources are able to generate x-ray pulses as short as 10 fs with up to ~10 12 linearly polarized photons The short pulse duration, brightness, coherence, and well-defined polarization of the X-ray radiation are the main ingredients that may allow realizing femtosecond single-shot visualization of sub 10 0 nm magnetic domains [Eis2004] In particular, it has been shown that if an ultrashort, bright,... left image shows modulation superimposed to the stripes They are coming from small components of in-plane spins (less than 1% ) (c and d) Small field of view of 1, 2 x 1, 2 µm2 of pump probe magnetic images taken in the time resolved mode (left: t = -10 0 ps before pump laser; right: t = 10 0 ps after pump laser) The color scale is common for the two images (c, d) and enhanced relative to the one of the two... developing new field is growing: Ultra-short high-energy pulsed X rays Compared with the lasers community where first technological developments were recently achieved [Spi1997, Dre20 01 Schn1999, Kra2009] in order to reach higher energies (5 -10 0 eV), the X-ray community is using high energy X rays from large facilities, for instance the synchrotron storage ring facilities were a large UV and X-ray energy... switches (based on metal-semiconductor junctions) [Acre20 01) ] Beside the large ~50 ps rise times a second limitation is the low induced magnetic fields (~0 .1 T) produced by the set-up at the sample location This often limits the experiments to soft material as permalloy and soft CoFe alloy films (Fig1) Such systems where extensively studied in the past 10 years focusing on reduced dimensions in nanostructures . Smiljanic Cover Designer Jan Hyrat Image Copyright design36, 2 011 . Used under license from Shutterstock.com First published October, 2 011 Printed in Croatia A free online edition of this book. can be found at www.intechopen.com Contents Preface IX Part 1 Femtosecond-Time-Scale Physics 1 Chapter 1 Magnetization Dynamic with Pulsed X Rays 3 Christine Boeglin Chapter. discussed in chapter 17 . Anatoli V. Andreev Professor of Physics M.V.Lomonosov Moscow State University Moscow, Russia Part 1 Femtosecond-Time-Scale Physics 1 Magnetization Dynamic