A Study of the Radiation Tolerance and Timing Properties of 3D Diamond Detectors.

We present a study on the radiation tolerance and timing properties of 3D diamond detectors fabricated by laser engineering on synthetic Chemical Vapor Deposited (CVD) plates. We evaluated the radiation hardness of the sensors using Charge Collection Efficiency (CCE) measurements after neutron fluences up to 1016 n/cm2 (1 MeV equivalent.) The radiation tolerance is significantly higher when moving from standard planar architecture to 3D architecture and increases with the increasing density of the columnar electrodes. Also, the maximum applicable bias voltage before electric breakdown increases significantly after high fluence irradiation, possibly due to the passivation of defects. The experimental analysis allowed us to predict the performance of the devices at higher fluence levels, well in the range of 1016 n/cm2. We summarize the recent results on the time resolution measurements of our test sensors after optimization of the laser fabrication process and outline future activity in developing pixel tracking systems for high luminosity particle physics experiments.

Direct interferometric measurement of the atomic dipole phase in high-order harmonic generation.

We report the first direct measurements of the atomic dipole phase in the process of high-order harmonic generation. Differently from previously reported studies based on frequency chirp measurements, we use extreme ultraviolet interferometry as the most natural and direct way to measure phase shifts. Our approach has the important advantage of allowing us to investigate the effects associated to both the main quantum paths involved in the emission of a particular harmonic, thus offering a particularly clear and simple picture of the underlying electronic dynamics.

Ramsey-type spectroscopy with high-order harmonics.

We present an experiment where Ramsey-type spectroscopy is applied to autoionizing states of krypton by using the ninth harmonic (88 nm) of a femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser. The ionization process, detected by an electron-energy spectrometer, shows the characteristic quantum interference pattern. The behavior of the fringe contrast compares favorably with a simple essential-state model, whose parameters have been taken from the literature. The experiment shows the feasibility of high-resolution spectroscopy in the extreme ultraviolet by using high-order laser harmonics.