Advancements in attosecond soft-X-ray spectroscopy by ICFO researchers have transformed material analysis, particularly in studying light-matter interactions and many-body dynamics, with promising implications for future technological applications.
X-ray absorption spectroscopy is an element-selective and electronic-state sensitive technique that is one of the most widely used analytical techniques to study the composition of materials or substances. Until recently, the method required arduous wavelength scanning and did not provide ultrafast temporal resolution to study electronic dynamics.
Over the last decade, the Attoscience and Ultrafast Optics group at ICFO le,d by ICREA Prof. at ICFO Jens Biegert h, has developed attosecond soft-X-ray absorption spectroscopy into a new analytical tool without the need for scanning and with attosecond temporal resolution.[1,2]
Attosecond soft-X-ray pulses with a duration between 23 as and 165 as and concomitant coherent soft-X-ray bandwidth from 120 to 600 eV[3] allow interrogation of the entire electronic structure of a material at once.
The combination of time resolution to detect electronic motion in real-time and the coherent bandwidth that registers where the change happens provides an entirely new and powerful tool for solid-state physics and chemistry.
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