Ultrafast pulse compression for attosecond microscopy

The generation of attosecond pulses opens the door to exploring electron dynamics in real time, yet producing such pulses is an ongoing challenge

In this talk, I will present my work toward generating single-cycle infrared femtosecond pulses through soliton self-compression in gas-filled hollow-core fibers, as a first step toward isolated attosecond pulse generation. The use of gas-filled hollow-core fibers allows us to control the pulse propagation properties, such as dispersion and nonlinearity, by simply adjusting the gas pressure. In this way, we compress 12 fs pulses into the two-cycle regime while preserving pulse quality. Temporal and spectral measurements were performed using ultrafast pulse diagnostics, confirming pulse compression toward the single-cycle regime depending on gas pressure and input pulse energy. Looking forward, this work establishes the foundation for producing extreme-ultraviolet attosecond pulses, and I will outline how their integration with scanning tunneling microscopy will enable simultaneous ultrafast temporal and atomic-scale spatial resolution