Highly sensitive attosecond microscopic videography of plasma dynamics

Ultrafast science involves the study of events unfolding on the shortest timescales: below a billionth of a second.

Scientific achievements in ultrafast, attosecond laser pulse generation have pushed the limit for temporal resolution and provided insight into electron dynamics.

Structural dynamics occurring on ultrafast timescales, however, cannot be inferred from a single data point but requires not only high temporal resolution but also two-dimensional information with a sufficiently high spatial resolution.

Furthermore, events that are non-repeatable due to stochastics requires videographic methods with ultrafast frame rates. Plasma generation is an excellent example of such phenomena, where the dynamics for every single event becomes unique.

Today, plasma constitutes the base for a plethora of scientific and industrial applications, such as X-ray generation, plasma-assisted catalysis, optical communication, manufacturing of electrodes, gas synthesis and attosecond laser pulse generation.

Yet, despite the enormous interest in plasma physics and chemistry, there are no video methods capable of visually and temporally resolving the dynamics involved on small scales.

Using the approaches outlined in this proposal, our ambition is to achieve videography with a temporal resolution approaching – and possibly even crossing – the border to the attosecond regime.