title: Attosecond spectral shearing interferometry.
abstract: We show that the complete characterization of arbitrarily short isolated attosecond x-ray pulses can be achieved by applying spectral shearing interferometry to photoelectron wave packets. These wave packets are coherently produced through the photoionization of atoms by two time-delayed replicas of the x-ray pulse, and are shifted in energy with respect to each other by simultaneously applying a strong laser field. The x-ray pulse is reconstructed with the algorithm developed for optical pulses, which requires no knowledge of ionization physics. Using a 800-nm shearing field, x-ray pulses shorter than approximately 400 asec can be fully characterized.
authors.affiliation: Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences, National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1A 0R6.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Quéré
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Itatani
authors.forename: G L
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: Yudin
authors.forename: P B
authors.initials: PB
authors.lastname: Corkum