Roadmap on Attosecond Science
Abstract
Twenty-five years have passed since the first experimental demonstration of attosecond pulses, marking the advent of our ability to resolve and control electron motion in real time. What began as a technological breakthrough - generating the shortest flashes ever produced - has evolved into a powerful approach for probing and steering electronic dynamics in atoms, molecules, and solids. This roadmap, authored by leading experts in the field, surveys the recent rapid progress in the generation and characterization of attosecond pulses, emerging attosecond measurement and control techniques, and their expanding range of applications. It reviews current and future developments in attosecond light sources, including novel laser technologies, waveform synthesizers, new schemes for high-order harmonic generation, attosecond pulse generation at free-electron lasers, and structured light. Advances in attosecond measurement methodologies are also discussed, encompassing all-attosecond pump-probe spectroscopy, attosecond four-wave mixing, attosecond microscopy, spectroscopy with light transients, and attosecond interferometry. Furthermore, the roadmap addresses applications of attosecond spectroscopy to reveal electron dynamics in molecules and condensed matter systems from both theoretical and experimental perspectives, and highlights emerging directions at the interface with quantum optics and quantum entanglement. Overall, this work aims to serve as a comprehensive resource for navigating the evolving landscape of attosecond science.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.15085,
title = {Roadmap on Attosecond Science},
author = {Rocio Borrego Varillas and Pierre Agostini and Fernando Ardana-Lamas and Cord L. Arnold and David Ayuso and Maurizio Reduzzi and Jakub Benda and Jens Biegert and Charles Bourassin-Bouchet and Thomas Brabec and Christian Brahms and Andrew C. Brown and David Busto and Jérémie Caillat and Francesca Calegari and Carlo Callegari and Stefanos Carlström and Zenghu Chang and Ming-Chang Chen and Anna G. Ciriolo and Paul Corkum and Gabriele Crippa and Rafael de Q. Garcia and Louis DiMauro and Nirit Dudovich and Per Eng-Johnsson and Davide Faccialà and Philip Flores and Titouan Gadeyne and Gianluca Aldo Geloni and Chase Geirger and Shima Gholam-Mirzaei and Jimena D. Gorfinkiel and Eleftherios Goulielmakis and Mohammed Hassan and Carlos Hernández-García and Phay Ho and Dandan Hui and Lynda R. Hutcheson and Misha Ivanov and Subhendu Kahaly and Henry Kapteyn and Nicholas Karpowicz and Franz X. Kärtner and Matthias Kling and Omer Kneller and Dong Hyuk Ko and Peter M. Kraus and Maximilian Kubullek and Stephen R. Leone and Franck Lépine and Anne L'Huillier and Chen-Ting Liao and Thomas Linker and Alexander Gabriel Lohr and Matteo Lucchini and Lars Bojer Madsen and Roland E. Mainz and Balázs Major and Jon P. Marangos and David Marco and Hugo Marroux and Sean Marshallsay and Rebeca Martínez Vázquez and Rodrigo Martín-Hernández and Zdeněk Mašín and Michael Meyer and Felipe Morales Moreno and Margaret Murnane and Daniel M. Neumark and Mauro Nisoli and Marcus Ossiander and Sreelakshmi Palakka and Serguei Patchkovskii and Zekun Pi and Luis Plaja and Julita Poborska and Miguel A. Porras and Kevin C. Prince and David N. Purschke and Nicolette G. Puskar and Giulio Maria Rossi and Jérémy R. Rouxel and Thierry Ruchon and Patrick Rupprecht and Pascal Salières and Giuseppe Sansone and Fabian Scheiba and Martin Schultze and Bernd Schütte and Svitozar Serkez and Miguel A. Silva-Toledo and Olga Smirnova and Salvatore Stagira and Andrea Trabattoni and John C. Travers and Igor Tyulnev and Morgane Vacher and Giulio Vampa and Hugo W. van der Hart and Katalin Varjú and Anne-Lise Viotti and Vartika Vishnoi and Marc Vrakking and Vincent Wanie and Stefan Witte and Fei Xu and Vladislav S. Yakovlev and Linda Young and Diling Zhu and Caterina Vozzi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.15085},
year = {2026}
}