Subfemtosecond light pulses can be obtained by superposing several high harmonics of an intense laser pulse. Provided that the harmonics are emitted simultaneously, increasing their number should result in shorter pulses. However, we found that the high harmonics were not synchronized on an attosecond time scale, thus setting a lower limit to the achievable x-ray pulse duration. We showed that the synchronization could be improved considerably by controlling the underlying ultrafast electron dynamics, to provide pulses of 130 attoseconds in duration. We discuss the possibility of achieving even shorter pulses, which would allow us to track fast electron processes in matter.

We describe a method for the complete temporal characterization of attosecond extreme ultraviolet (xuv) fields. An electron wave packet is generated in the continuum by photoionizing atoms with the attosecond field, and a low-frequency dressing laser pulse is used as a phase gate for frequency-resolved-optical-gating-like measurements on this wave packet. This method is valid for xuv fields of an arbitrary temporal structure, e.g., trains of nonidentical attosecond pulses. It establishes a direct connection between the main attosecond characterization techniques demonstrated experimentally so far, and considerably extends their scope, thus providing a general perspective on attosecond metrology.

We report the generation, compression, and delivery on target of ultrashort extreme-ultraviolet light pulses using external amplitude and phase control. Broadband harmonic radiation is first generated by focusing an infrared laser with a carefully chosen intensity into a gas cell containing argon atoms. The emitted light then goes through a hard aperture and a thin aluminum filter that selects a 30-eV bandwidth around a 30-eV photon energy and synchronizes all of the components, thereby enabling the formation of a train of almost Fourier-transform-limited single-cycle 170 attosecond pulses. Our experiment demonstrates a practical method for synthesizing and controlling attosecond waveforms.