English

6.2-GW tabletop attosecond light source

Optics 2026-04-23 v1

Abstract

The generation of attosecond pulses (1 as=10-18 s) has enabled real-time observation and manipulation of coherent electron dynamics, yet their low peak power has hindered the development of advanced attosecond pump-probe spectroscopy and attosecond nonlinear metrology. Here we overcome this limitation by generating 1.64 uJ, 263 as isolated attosecond pulses with a peak power of 6.2 GW, the highest pulse energy and peak power reported for a tabletop isolated attosecond source. This is achieved by combining a 2.1 TW, few-cycle (8.3 fs) two-color synthesizer with a loose focusing geometry that enables macroscopic phase-matching. The synthesizer features a stabilized carrier-envelope phase and an actively synchronized relative time delay between the two-color channels, ensuring high stability and reproducibility. This robust tabletop attosecond source enables nonlinear effect experiments that were previously inaccessible with lower-power IAPs, establishing a foundation for advanced attosecond spectroscopy and nonlinear metrology.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.20084,
  title  = {6.2-GW tabletop attosecond light source},
  author = {Lihui Meng and Lu Xu and Xusheng Zhu and Lixin He and Zan Nie and Pengfei Lan and Peixiang Lu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.20084},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

16 pages, 6 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T12:29:33.031Z