Observation of few-cycle, strong-field phenomena in surface plasmon fields

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Optics express 2010-11, Vol.18 (23), p.24206-24212
Main Authors: Dombi, P, Irvine, S E, Rácz, P, Lenner, M, Kroó, N, Farkas, G, Mitrofanov, A, Baltuška, A, Fuji, T, Krausz, F, Elezzabi, A Y
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1094-4087
1094-4087
DOI:10.1364/OE.18.024206