Combined high-harmonic interferometries for vectorial spectroscopy

Antoine Camper (1, 2) , Amélie Ferré (3) , Valérie Blanchet (3, 4) , Frédéric Burgy (3) , Dominique Descamps (3) , Stéphane Petit (5) , Thierry Ruchon (2, 1) , Yann Mairesse (3)

1 LIDyl - Laboratoire Interactions, Dynamiques et Lasers (ex SPAM)
2 ATTO - Attophysique
3 CELIA - Centre d'Etudes Lasers Intenses et Applications
4 Femto (LCAR)
5 CESAER - Centre d'Economie et de Sociologie Rurales Appliquées à l'Agriculture et aux Espaces Ruraux

We present a new method to characterize transverse vectorial light produced by high-harmonic generation (HHG). The incoherent sum of the two components of the electric field is measured using a bi-dimensional transient grating while one of the components is simultaneously characterized using two-source interferometry. The combination of these two interferometric setups enables the amplitude and phase measurement of the two vectorial components of the extreme ultraviolet radiation. We demonstrate the potential of this technique in the case of HHG in aligned nitrogen, revealing the vectorial properties of harmonics 9–17 of a Ti:sapphire laser.

Domains: Physics [physics]; Physics [physics]

Antoine Camper, Amélie Ferré, Valérie Blanchet, Frédéric Burgy, Dominique Descamps, et al.. Combined high-harmonic interferometries for vectorial spectroscopy. Optics Letters, 2015, 40 (22), pp.5387-5390. ⟨10.1364/OL.40.005387⟩. ⟨cea-01244287⟩