Thanks to a process called “high-order harmonic generation” significant progress has been made in generating ultrashort X-ray pulses over the past few years, with a duration of a few attoseconds (equivalent to dividing a second into 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 parts). This extremely short duration is comparable to the time it takes for electrons to transfer between atoms,
The generation of ultra-short light pulses with a good spatial structure is the philosopher’s stone of ultrafast pulse physics. These pulses make it possible to study and modify the properties of matter at time scales unreachable by other procedures. In recent decades, great strides have been made in the generation of high-quality ultrashort pulses among
Recently, researchers belonging to ALF, have been working in the development of a miniaturized spectrometer in collaboration with the European Space Agency, the Department of Physics and Swiss Nanoscience Institute (University of Basel), the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences (ETH Zurich), the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) and the Optics
Nowadays, the high-order harmonic generation process is an extended useful tool for the study of femtosecond dynamics. Nevertheless, there are still many doubts regarding the electron behavior inside different types of mediums. Recent studies in solid targets have revealed new scenarios with extraordinary electronic dynamics compared with atoms or molecules. The process in solids can be
Sterling silver jewelry, rose gold with exclusive designs, rings, earrings, bracelets… made out of light? Like a high fashion jewelry workshop, the Laser and Photonics Applications research group of the University of Salamanca (ALF-USAL) focuses its efforts on designing light jewels through non-linear optics. Jewels, not only for their beauty in the form of high-frequency
In spite of having an extremely short life, of just a few quadrillionths of a second, ultrashort femtosecond laser pulses have become an indispensable tool in many areas of science and technology, as they allow to probe the most fundamental properties of matter on ultrafast time scales. Generating these such short pulses of light in
The prestigious journal Optica has just published a new article demonstrating the generation of high-frequency light with multiple vibration directions and a spiral phase structure. The research is the result of an international theoretical-experimental collaboration between the Laser and Photonics Applications Group of the University of Salamanca, the University of Paris-Saclay and the Colorado School
As in the books of JRR Tolkien, the Research Group of Laser Applications and Photonics (ALF-USAL) continues their adventure in the search of the Ring. After finding the Phase-Matched Ring in Argon based High-Harmonic Generation [1], now they’ve gone a step beyond to find the Phase-Matched Ring in graphene. It turns out that when a graphene
In 1924, Louis-Victor Pierre Raymond, pair of France and Duke of Broglie, astonished his contemporaries in proposing that electrons behave as waves, when moving along spatial dimensions of a few millionths of a milimeters. These distances, dubbed nanometers, remained technologically unaccessible until some decades ago. Roughly speaking, if the electrons appear as waves under these circumstances,