Attosecond real-time observation of electron tunnelling in atoms
Attosecond real-time observation of electron tunnelling in atoms
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DOI：
10.1038/nature05648
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发表时间：
2007-04-05
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
Krausz, F.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Uiberacker, M.;Uphues, Th.;Krausz, F.
暴露在强光下的原子失去一个或多个电子，变成离子。在强场中，这一过程预计将通过隧穿受光场抑制的结合势发生，该结合势在其振荡的峰值附近。在这里，我们报道了对强场相互作用中最基本的步骤：光致电子隧穿的实时观测。这一过程被发现以持续数百阿秒的锐利步骤耗尽原子约束态。这提出了一种新的技术，阿秒隧道，用于以高时间分辨率探测原子或分子的短暂、瞬时状态。通过捕捉亚飞秒分辨率的多电子激发(抖动)和弛豫(级联俄歇衰变)过程，证明了阿秒隧穿的有效性。
Atoms exposed to intense light lose one or more electrons and become ions. In strong fields, the process is predicted to occur via tunnelling through the binding potential that is suppressed by the light field near the peaks of its oscillations. Here we report the real-time observation of this most elementary step in strong-field interactions: light-induced electron tunnelling. The process is found to deplete atomic bound states in sharp steps lasting several hundred attoseconds. This suggests a new technique, attosecond tunnelling, for probing short-lived, transient states of atoms or molecules with high temporal resolution. The utility of attosecond tunnelling is demonstrated by capturing multi-electron excitation (shake-up) and relaxation ( cascaded Auger decay) processes with subfemtosecond resolution.