title: Observation of few-cycle, strong-field phenomena in surface plasmon fields.
abstract: We present experimental evidence of the generation of few-cycle propagating surface plasmon polariton wavepackets. These ultrashort plasmonic pulses comprised of only 2-3 field oscillations were characterized by an autocorrelation measurement based on electron photoemission. By exploiting plasmonic field enhancement, we achieved plasmon-induced tunnelling emission from the metal surface at low laser intensity, opening perspectives for strong-field experiments with low pulse energies. All-optical electron acceleration up to keV kinetic energy is also demonstrated in these surface-confined, few-cycle fields with only 1.35×10(12) W/cm2 focused laser intensity. The experimental results are found to be in excellent agreement with the model.
authors.affiliation: Research Institute for Solid-State Physics and Optics, Konkoly-Thege M. út 29-33, 1121 Budapest, Hungary. dombi@szfki.hu
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Dombi
authors.forename: S E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Irvine
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authors.lastname: Rácz
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lenner
authors.forename: N
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authors.lastname: Kroó
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authors.lastname: Farkas
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authors.lastname: Mitrofanov
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authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Baltuška
authors.forename: T
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authors.lastname: Fuji
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Krausz
authors.forename: A Y
authors.initials: AY
authors.lastname: Elezzabi