Molecular Fine Structure from Water Window X-rays

Postprint (published version

0.5 keV soft X-ray attosecond continua

Attosecond light pulses in the extreme ultraviolet have drawn a great deal of attention due to their ability to interrogate electronic dynamics in real time. Nevertheless, to follow charge dynamics and excitations in materials, element selectivity is a prerequisite, which demands such pulses in the soft X-ray region, above 200 eV, to simultaneously cover several fundamental absorption edges of the constituents of the materials. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the exploitation of a transient phase matching regime to generate carrier envelope controlled soft X-ray supercontinua with pulse energies up to 2.9 +/- 0.1 pJ and a flux of (7.3 +/- 0.1)x10^7 photons/s across the entire water window and attosecond pulses with 13 as transform limit. Our results herald attosecond science at the fundamental absorption edges of matter by bridging the gap between ultrafast temporal resolution and element specific probing

Collective Oscillations of an Imbalanced Fermi Gas: Axial Compression Modes and Polaron Effective Mass

We investigate the low-lying compression modes of a unitary Fermi gas with imbalanced spin populations. For low polarization, the strong coupling between the two spin components leads to a hydrodynamic behavior of the cloud. For large population imbalance we observe a decoupling of the oscillations of the two spin components, giving access to the effective mass of the Fermi polaron, a quasi-particle composed of an impurity dressed by particle-hole pair excitations in a surrounding Fermi sea. We find $m^*/m=1.17(10)$, in agreement with the most recent theoretical predictions.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PR

Attosecond Streaking in the Water Window: A New Regime of Attosecond Pulse Characterization

We report on the first streaking measurement of water-window attosecond pulses generated via high harmonic generation, driven by sub-2-cycle, CEP-stable, 1850 nm laser pulses. Both the central photon energy and the energy bandwidth far exceed what has been demonstrated thus far, warranting the investigation of the attosecond streaking technique for the soft X-ray regime and the limits of the FROGCRAB retrieval algorithm under such conditions. We also discuss the problem of attochirp compensation and issues regarding much lower photo-ionization cross sections compared with the XUV in addition to the fact that several shells of target gases are accessed simultaneously. Based on our investigation, we caution that the vastly different conditions in the soft X-ray regime warrant a diligent examination of the fidelity of the measurement and the retrieval procedure.Comment: 14 Pages, 12 figure

Experimental Study of the BEC-BCS Crossover Region in Lithium 6

We report Bose-Einstein condensation of weakly bound $^6$Li$_2$molecules in a crossed optical trap near a Feshbach resonance. We measure a molecule-molecule scattering length of$170^{+100}_{-60}$ nm at 770 G, in good agreement with theory.We study the expansion of the cloud in the BEC-BCS crossoverregion.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to PR

Expansion of a lithium gas in the BEC-BCS crossover

We report on experiments in $^6$Li Fermi gases near Feshbach resonances. A broad s-wave resonance is used to form a Bose-Einstein condensate of weakly bound $^6$Li$_2$ molecules in a crossed optical trap. The measured molecule-molecule scattering length of $170^{+100}_{-60}$ nm at 770 G is found in good agreement with theory. The expansion energy of the cloud in the BEC-BCS crossover region is measured. Finally we discuss the properties of p-wave Feshbach resonances observed near 200 Gauss and new s-wave resonances in the heteronuclear $^6$Li- $^7$Li mixture.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, Proceedings of ICAP 200

Ultrafast nonlinear optical response of Dirac fermions in graphene

The speed of solid-state electronic devices, determined by the temporal dynamics of charge carriers, could potentially reach unprecedented petahertz frequencies through direct manipulation by optical fields, consisting in a million-fold increase from state-of-the-art technology. In graphene, charge carrier manipulation is facilitated by exceptionally strong coupling to optical fields, from which stems an important back-action of photoexcited carriers. Here we investigate the instantaneous response of graphene to ultrafast optical fields, elucidating the role of hot carriers on sub-100 fs timescales. The measured nonlinear response and its dependence on interaction time and field polarization reveal the back-action of hot carriers over timescales commensurate with the optical field. An intuitive picture is given for the carrier trajectories in response to the optical-field polarization state. We note that the peculiar interplay between optical fields and charge carriers in graphene may also apply to surface states in topological insulators with similar Dirac cone dispersion relations.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Automatic rigging and animation of 3D characters

Animating an articulated 3D character currently requires manual rigging to specify its internal skeletal structure and to define how the input motion deforms its surface. We present a method for animating characters automatically. Given a static character mesh and a generic skeleton, our method adapts the skeleton to the character and attaches it to the surface, allowing skeletal motion data to animate the character. Because a single skeleton can be used with a wide range of characters, our method, in conjunction with a library of motions for a few skeletons, enables a user-friendly animation system for novices and children. Our prototype implementation, called Pinocchio, typically takes under a minute to rig a character on a modern midrange PC.Solidworks CorporationNational Science Foundation (U.S.). Graduate Research Fellowshi

High flux table-top soft X-ray source driven by sub-2-cycle, CEP stable, 1.85 μm 1 kHz pulses for carbon K-edge spectroscopy

We report on the first table-top high flux source of coherent soft X-ray radiation up to 400 eV, operating at 1 kHz. This source covers the carbon K-edge with a beam brilliance of (4.3 ± 1.2) × 1015 photons/s/mm2/strad/10% bandwidth and a photon flux of (1.9 ± 0.1) × 107 photons/s/1% bandwidth. We use this source to demonstrate table-top X-ray near edge fine structure spectroscopy at the carbon K-edge of a polyimide foil and retrieve the specific absorption features corresponding to the binding orbitals of the carbon atoms in the foil.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft