Light phase detection with on-chip petahertz electronic networks.

Ultrafast, high-intensity light-matter interactions lead to optical-field-driven photocurrents with an attosecond-level temporal response. These photocurrents can be used to detect the carrier-envelope-phase (CEP) of short optical pulses, and enable optical-frequency, petahertz (PHz) electronics for high-speed information processing. Despite recent reports on optical-field-driven photocurrents in various nanoscale solid-state materials, little has been done in examining the large-scale electronic integration of these devices to improve their functionality and compactness. In this work, we demonstrate enhanced, on-chip CEP detection via optical-field-driven photocurrents in a monolithic array of electrically-connected plasmonic bow-tie nanoantennas that are contained within an area of hundreds of square microns. The technique is scalable and could potentially be used for shot-to-shot CEP tagging applications requiring orders-of-magnitude less pulse energy compared to alternative ionization-based techniques. Our results open avenues for compact time-domain, on-chip CEP detection, and inform the development of integrated circuits for PHz electronics as well as integrated platforms for attosecond and strong-field science.

Mapping Photoemission and Hot-Electron Emission from Plasmonic Nanoantennas.

Understanding plasmon-mediated electron emission and energy transfer on the nanometer length scale is critical to controlling light-matter interactions at nanoscale dimensions. In a high-resolution lithographic material, electron emission and energy transfer lead to chemical transformations. In this work, we employ such chemical transformations in two different high-resolution electron-beam lithography resists, poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and hydrogen silsesquioxane (HSQ), to map local electron emission and energy transfer with nanometer resolution from plasmonic nanoantennas excited by femtosecond laser pulses. We observe exposure of the electron-beam resists (both PMMA and HSQ) in regions on the surface of nanoantennas where the local field is significantly enhanced. Exposure in these regions is consistent with previously reported optical-field-controlled electron emission from plasmonic hotspots as well as earlier work on low-electron-energy scanning probe lithography. For HSQ, in addition to exposure in hotspots, we observe resist exposure at the centers of rod-shaped nanoantennas in addition to exposure in plasmonic hotspots. Optical field enhancement is minimized at the center of nanorods suggesting that exposure in these regions involves a different mechanism to that in plasmonic hotspots. Our simulations suggest that exposure at the center of nanorods results from the emission of hot electrons produced via plasmon decay in the nanorods. Overall, the results presented in this work provide a means to map both optical-field-controlled electron emission and hot-electron transfer from nanoparticles via chemical transformations produced locally in lithographic materials.

Radially polarized Bessel-Gauss beams: decentered Gaussian beam analysis and experimental verification.

We derive solutions for radially polarized Bessel-Gauss beams in free-space by superimposing decentered Gaussian beams with differing polarization states. We numerically show that the analytical result is applicable even for large semi-aperture angles, and we experimentally confirm the analytical expression by employing a fiber-based mode-converter.

Bessel-Gauss beam enhancement cavities for high-intensity applications.

We introduce Bessel-Gauss beam enhancement cavities that may circumvent the major obstacles to more efficient cavity-enhanced high-field physics such as high-harmonic generation. The basic properties of Bessel-Gauss beams are reviewed and their transformation properties through simple optical systems (consisting of spherical and conical elements) are presented. A general Bessel-Gauss cavity design strategy is outlined, and a particular geometry, the confocal Bessel-Gauss cavity, is analyzed in detail. We numerically simulate the confocal Bessel-Gauss cavity and present an example cavity with 300 MHz repetition rate supporting an effective waist of 33 µm at the focus and an intensity ratio from the focus to the cavity mirror surfaces of 1.5 × 10(4).

Generalizing higher-order Bessel-Gauss beams: analytical description and demonstration.

We report on a novel class of higher-order Bessel-Gauss beams in which the well-known Bessel-Gauss beam is the fundamental mode and the azimuthally symmetric Laguerre-Gaussian beams are special cases. We find these higher-order Bessel-Gauss beams by superimposing decentered Hermite-Gaussian beams. We show analytically and experimentally that these higher-order Bessel-Gauss beams resemble higher-order eigenmodes of optical resonators consisting of aspheric mirrors. This work is relevant for the many applications of Bessel-Gauss beams in particular the more recently proposed high-intensity Bessel-Gauss enhancement cavities for strong-field physics applications.