New trends in attosecond science

In this proposal, I concentrate on two different projects that go into two directions of attosecond science. Both directions are quite new, which is why I call this proposal “New trends in attosecond science”. The first project lies at the border of attosecond science and quantum information.

It is about exploring entanglement which happens naturally in the photoexcitation of atoms and molecules and decoherence which may come from coupling to the environment or from incomplete measurements leading to loss of information.

Our aim is to study on an ultrafast time scale the entanglement and decoherence of two particles, such as an ion and an electron, or two electrons, created by the absorption of an ultrashort light pulse.There is presently a paradigm shift in laser technology, where titanium sapphire lasers are replaced by a much simpler and cheaper technology, based on industrial ytterbium lasers, together with post-compression techniques.

This new technology will open applications of high-order harmonic generation and attosecond science to a much broader user community.

We want to be part of this transition and develop stable, flexible, well-characterized, optimized high-order harmonic generation sources based on ytterbium lasers and explore new applications, e.g. within quantum optics.