Attosecond real-time observation of electron tunnelling in atoms.
Nature
; 446(7136): 627-32, 2007 Apr 05.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-17410167
ABSTRACT
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.
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Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Nature
Ano de publicação:
2007
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Alemanha