Exploring single-photon ionization on the attosecond time scale

Abstract

One of the fundamental processes in nature is the photoelectric effect in which an electron is ripped away from its atom via the interaction with a photon. This process was long believed to be instantaneous but with the development of attosecond pulses (1 as 10-18 s) we can finally get an insight into its dynamic. Here we measure a delay in ionization time between two differently bound electrons. The outgoing electrons are created via ionization with a train of attosecond pulses and we probe their relative delay with a synchronized infrared laser. We demonstrate how this probe field influences the measured delays and show that this contribution can be estimated with a universal formula, which allows us to extract field free atomic data. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.