Complete reconstruction of ultra-broadband isolated attosecond pulses including partial averaging over the angular distribution

• Published in: Optics express Vol. 26; no. 11; pp. 14719 - 14740
• Main Authors: Gaumnitz, Thomas, Jain, Arohi, Wörner, Hans Jakob
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 28.05.2018
• ISSN: 1094-4087; 1094-4087
• DOI: 10.1364/oe.26.014719

Attosecond streaking is a powerful tool to investigate ultrafast electron dynamics on the attosecond time scale. To obtain the highest temporal resolution in a pump-probe experiment, soft-X-ray (SXR) and infrared (IR) pulses have to be carefully characterized. Here, we present a detailed description of our recent generalization of the Volkov-transform generalized projection algorithm (VTGPA) and its application to multiple overlapping photoelectron bands. This method allows for the complete temporal reconstruction of both IR and SXR pulses under the inclusion of accurate complex photoionization matrix elements (PMEs). In this article, we compare the performance of our new method with traditional algorithms. We particularly focus on the important role played by the photoelectron angular distribution (PAD) which needs to be taken into account for the highest fidelity of attosecond pulse reconstruction. For this purpose, we investigate numerically the influence of the finite collection angle of the electron spectrometer on the retrieval and the obtained pulse parameters. We further theoretically demonstrate the reliability of the reconstruction for pulse durations even shorter than the atomic unit of time.