• DOI:10.1088/1361-6633/aafa35
• Corpus ID: 58632996

Attosecond single-cycle undulator light: a review.

@article{Mak2019AttosecondSU,
  title={Attosecond single-cycle undulator light: a review.},
  author={Alan Mak and Georgii Shamuilov and Peter Sal{\'e}n and David Dunning and J'anos Hebling and Yuichiro Kida and Ryota Kinjo and B W J McNeil and Takashi Tanaka and N. R. Thompson and Zolt{\'a}n Tibai and Gy{\"o}rgy T{\'o}th and Vitaliy Goryashko},
  journal={Reports on progress in physics. Physical Society},
  year={2019},
  volume={82 2},
  pages={
          025901
        }
}

• A. Mak, G. Shamuilov, +10 authors V. Goryashko
• Published 21 January 2019
• Physics
• Reports on progress in physics. Physical Society

Research at modern light sources continues to improve our knowledge of the natural world, from the subtle workings of life to matter under extreme conditions. Free-electron lasers, for instance, have enabled the characterization of biomolecular structures with sub-ångström spatial resolution, and paved the way to controlling the molecular functions. On the other hand, attosecond temporal resolution is necessary to broaden our scope of the ultrafast world. Here we discuss attosecond pulse generation beyond present capabilities. Furthermore, we review three recently proposed methods of generating attosecond x-ray pulses. These novel methods exploit the coherent radiation of microbunched electrons in undulators and the tailoring of the emitted wavefronts. The computed pulse energy outperforms pre-existing technologies by three orders of magnitude. Specifically, our simulations of the proposed Soft X-ray Laser at MAX IV (Lund, Sweden) show that a pulse duration of 50-100 as and a pulse energy up to 5 [Formula: see text]J is feasible with the novel methods. In addition, the methods feature pulse shape control, enable the incorporation of orbital angular momentum, and can be used in combination with modern compact free-electron laser setups.