Chiral High-harmonic Generation and Spectroscopy on Solid Surfaces Using Polarization-tailored Strong Fields

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2021 Jun 18

PMID 34140484

Citations 3

Authors

Tobias Heinrich

Marco Taucer

Ofer Kfir

P B Corkum

Andre Staudte

Claus Ropers

Murat Sivis

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Strong-field methods in solids enable new strategies for ultrafast nonlinear spectroscopy and provide all-optical insights into the electronic properties of condensed matter in reciprocal and real space. Additionally, solid-state media offers unprecedented possibilities to control high-harmonic generation using modified targets or tailored excitation fields. Here we merge these important points and demonstrate circularly-polarized high-harmonic generation with polarization-matched excitation fields for spectroscopy of chiral electronic properties at surfaces. The sensitivity of our approach is demonstrated for structural helicity and termination-mediated ferromagnetic order at the surface of silicon-dioxide and magnesium oxide, respectively. Circularly polarized radiation emanating from a solid sample now allows to add basic symmetry properties as chirality to the arsenal of strong-field spectroscopy in solids. Together with its inherent temporal (femtosecond) resolution and non-resonant broadband spectrum, the polarization control of high harmonics from condensed matter can illuminate ultrafast and strong field dynamics of surfaces, buried layers or thin films.

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