Peer-Review Publications

The development of high-power, broadband sources of coherent mid-infrared radiation is currently the subject of intense research that is driven by a substantial number of existing and continuously emerging applications in medical diagnostics, spectroscopy, microscopy, and fundamental science. One of the major, long-standing challenges in improving the performance of these applications has been the construction of compact, broadband mid-infrared radiation sources, which unify the properties of high brightness and spatial and temporal coherence. Due to the lack of such radiation sources, several emerging applications can be addressed only with infrared (IR)-beamlines in large-scale synchrotron facilities, which are limited regarding user access and only partially fulfill these properties. Here, we present a table-top, broadband, coherent mid-infrared light source that provides brightness at an unprecedented level that supersedes that of synchrotrons in the wavelength range between 3.7 and 18 µm by several orders of magnitude. This result is enabled by a high-power, few-cycle Tm-doped fiber laser system, which is employed as a pump at 1.9 µm wavelength for intrapulse difference frequency generation (IPDFG). IPDFG intrinsically ensures the formation of carrier-envelope-phase stable pulses, which provide ideal prerequisites for state-of-the-art spectroscopy and microscopy.

Analytical solutions for the emitted nonlinear Thomson scattering spectrum with radiation reaction (RR) included are provided for a single electron colliding with a high intensity laser pulse. Further expressions are derived for the peak intensity for a given harmonic order and the downshift of the frequency when RR is included. Controlling the spectrum with shaping of the laser pulse frequency (chirp) has been investigated. It is shown that chirping of the laser pulse gives a distinct fingerprint of the effect of RR in the spectrum.

Motivated by the string theory corrections in the low-energy limit of both gauge and gravity sides, we consider three-dimensional black holes in the presence of dilatonic gravity and the Born-Infeld nonlinear electromagnetic field. We find that geometric behavior of the solutions is similar to the behavior of the hyperscaling violation metric, asymptotically. We also investigate thermodynamics of the solutions and show that the generalization to dilatonic gravity introduces novel properties into thermodynamics of the black holes which were absent in the Einstein gravity. Furthermore, we explore the possibility of tuning out part of the dilatonic effects using the Born-Infeld generalization.

Controlling the parameters of a laser plasma accelerated electron beam is a topic of intense research with a particular focus placed on controlling the injection phase of electrons into the accelerating structure from the background plasma. An essential prerequisite for high-quality beams is dark-current free acceleration (i.e., no electrons accelerated beyond those deliberately injected). We show that small-scale density ripples in the background plasma are sufficient to cause the uncontrolled (self-)injection of electrons. Such ripples can be as short as ∼50  μm and can therefore not be resolved by standard interferometry. Background free injection with substantially improved beam characteristics (divergence and pointing) is demonstrated in a gas cell designed for a controlled gas flow. The results are supported by an analytical theory as well as 3D particle in cell simulations.

The semiclassical approximation of the worldline path integral is a powerful tool to study nonperturbative electron-positron pair creation in spacetime-dependent background fields. Finding solutions of the classical equations of motion, i.e., worldline instantons, is possible analytically only in special cases, and a numerical treatment is nontrivial as well. We introduce a completely general numerical approach based on an approximate evaluation of the discretized path integral that easily and robustly gives the full semiclassical pair production rate in nontrivial multidimensional fields, and apply it to some example cases.

The elastic scattering of twisted electrons by diatomic molecules is studied within the framework of the nonrelativistic first Born approximation. In this process, the coherent interaction of incident electrons with two molecular centers may cause interference patterns in the angular distributions of outgoing particles. We investigate how this Young-type interference is influenced by the complex internal structure of twisted beams. In particular, we show that the corkscrewlike phase front and the inhomogeneous intensity profile of the incident beam can strongly modify the angular distribution of electrons, scattered off a single well-localized molecule. For the collision with a macroscopic target, composed of randomly distributed but aligned molecules, the angular-differential cross section may reveal valuable information about the transverse and longitudinal momenta of twisted states. To illustrate the difference between the scattering of twisted and plane-wave beams for both single-molecule and macroscopic-target scenarios, detailed calculations have been performed for a H2 target.

Schizophyllum commune is a filamentous basidiomycete causing white-rot in many wood species with the help of a broad range of enzymes including multicopper oxidases such as laccases and laccase-like oxidases. Since these enzymes exhibit a broad substrate range, their ability to oxidatively degrade black slate was investigated. Both haploid monokaryotic, and mated dikaryotic strains were able to grow on black slate rich in organic carbon as sole carbon source. On defined media, only the monokaryon showed growth promotion by addition of slate. At the same time, metals were released from the slate and, after reaching a threshold concentration, inhibited further growth of the fungus. The proteome during decomposition of the black slate showed induction of proteins potentially involved in rock degradation and stress resistance, and the gene for laccase-like oxidase mco2 was up-regulated. Specifically in the dikaryon, the laccase gene lcc1 was induced, while lcc2 as well as mco1, mco3, and mco4 expression levels remained similar. Spectrophotometric analysis revealed that both life forms were able to degrade the rock and produce smaller particles.

We report the first ionization potentials (IP1) of the heavy actinides, fermium (Fm, atomic number Z = 100), mendelevium (Md, Z = 101), nobelium (No, Z = 102), and lawrencium (Lr, Z = 103), determined using a method based on a surface ionization process coupled to an online mass separation technique in an atom-at-a-time regime. The measured IP1 values agree well with those predicted by state-of-the-art relativistic calculations performed alongside the present measurements. Similar to the well-established behavior for the lanthanides, the IP1 values of the heavy actinides up to No increase with filling up the 5f orbital, while that of Lr is the lowest among the actinides. These results clearly demonstrate that the 5f orbital is fully filled at No with the [Rn]5f147s2 configuration and that Lr has a weakly bound electron outside the No core. In analogy to the lanthanide series, the present results unequivocally verify that the actinide series ends with Lr.

Understanding polarization in waveguides is of fundamental importance for any photonic device and is particularly relevant within the scope of fiber optics. Here, we investigate the dependence of the geometry-induced polarization behavior of single-ring antiresonant hollow-core fibers on various parameters from the experimental perspective, showing that structural deviations from an ideal polygonal shape impose birefringence and polarization-dependent loss, confirmed by a toy model. The minimal output ellipticity was found at the wavelength of lowest loss near the center of the transmission band, whereas birefringence substantially increases toward the resonances. The analysis that qualitatively also applies to other kinds of hollow-core fibers showed that maximizing the amount of linearly polarized light at the fiber output demands both operating at the wavelength of lowest loss, as well as carefully choosing the relative orientation of input polarization. This should correspond to the situation in which the difference of the core extent along the two corresponding orthogonal polarization directions is minimal. Due to their practical relevance, we expect our findings to be very important in fields such as nonlinear photonics or metrology.

The Auger decay of the spin-orbit and molecular-field split Br 3d−1 core holes in HBr is investigated, both by a photoelectron–Auger-electron coincidence experiment and by ab initio calculations based on the one-center approximation. The branching ratios for the Auger decay of the five different core-hole states to the 4p(σ,π)−2 dicationic final states are determined. Experimental and theoretical data are in good agreement and conform to results for the 4pπ−2 final states from a previous analysis of the high-resolution conventional Auger-electron spectrum. The branching ratios for the Br 3d−1 Auger decay to the 4p(σ,π)−2 with Σ symmetry follow the propensity rule of L2,3VV Auger decay stating that the oriented core holes decay preferentially by involving a valence electron from an orbital with the same spatial orientation. For the M4,5VV decay in HBr this propensity rule has to be supplemented by the requirement that the Auger-electron channel and the other valence orbital have the same preferential orientation. We also probe the influence of the Auger kinetic energy on the distortion of the photoline caused by the postcollision interaction effect. For small kinetic energies, differences between experimental results and theoretical predictions are identified.

We investigate dissociative single and double ionization of HeH^+ induced by intense femtosecond laser pulses. By employing a semiclassical model with nuclear trajectories moving on field-dressed surfaces and ionization events treated as stochastical jumps, we identify a strong-field mechanism wherein the molecules dynamically align along the laser polarization axis and stretch towards a critical internuclear distance before dissociative ionization. As the tunnel-ionization rate is larger for larger internuclear distances and for aligned samples, ionization is enhanced. The strong dynamical rotation originates from the anisotropy of the internuclear distance-dependent polarizability tensor, which features a maximum at certain internuclear distances. Good qualitative agreement with our experimental observations is found. Finally, we investigate under which experimental conditions isotope effects of different isotopologues of HeH^+ can be observed.

Modern laser-based XUV light sources provide very high photon fluxes which have previously only been available at large scale facilities. This allows high-performance XUV nanoscale imaging to be implemented in a table-top manner, and thus qualifies XUV imaging as a novel imaging technique complementing electron and visible-light microscopy. This article presents the current state-of-the-art in table-top XUV light sources and matched coherent imaging schemes. Selected experiments demonstrate the unique capabilities of XUV imaging—namely, nanoscale (sub-20 nm) resolution, single shot imaging, imaging of extended samples and 3D imaging of µm-sized objects. In addition, future prospects will be discussed, including scaling to few-nm resolution, extension to the soft x-ray spectral region, chemically-specific imaging at absorption edges and time-resolved imaging on femtosecond time-scales.

We revise the calibration of scintillating screens commonly used to detect relativistic electron beams with low average current, e.g., from laser-plasma accelerators, based on new and expanded measurements that include higher charge density and different types of screens than previous work. Electron peak charge densities up to 10 nC/mm2 were provided by focused picosecond-long electron beams delivered by the Electron Linac for beams with high Brilliance and low Emittance (ELBE) at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf. At low charge densities, a linear scintillation response was found, followed by the onset of saturation in the range of nC/mm2. The absolute calibration factor (photons/sr/pC) in this linear regime was measured to be almost a factor of 2 lower than that reported by Buck et al. retrospectively implying a higher charge in the charge measurements performed with the former calibration. A good agreement was found with the results provided by Glinec et al.. Furthermore long-term irradiation tests with an integrated dose of approximately 50 nC/mm2 indicate a significant decrease of the scintillation efficiency over time. Finally, in order to enable the transfer of the absolute calibration between laboratories, a new constant reference light source has been developed.

This article reports on the development of thin diamond detectors and their characterization for their application in temporal profile measurements of subnanosecond ion bunches. Two types of diamonds were used: a 20 μm thin polycrystalline chemical vapor deposited (CVD) diamond and a membrane with a thickness of (5 ± 1) μm etched out of a single crystal (sc) CVD diamond. The combination of a small detector electrode and an impedance matched signal outlet leads to excellent time response properties with a signal pulse resolution (FWHM) of τ = (113 ± 11) ps. Such a fast diamond detector is a perfect device for the time of flight measurements of MeV ions with bunch durations in the subnanosecond regime. The scCVD diamond membrane detector was successfully implemented within the framework of the laser ion generation handling and transport project, in which ion beams are accelerated via a laser-driven source and shaped with conventional accelerator technology. The detector was used to measure subnanosecond proton bunches with an intensity of 108 protons per bunch.

The performance of fiber laser systems has drastically increased over recent decades which has opened up new industrial and scientific applications for this technology. However, currently a number of physical effects prevents further power scaling. Coherent combination of beams from multiple emitters has been established as a power scaling technique beyond these limitations. It is possible to increase the average power and, for pulsed laser systems, also parameters such as the pulse energy and the peak power. To realize such laser systems, various aspects have to be taken into account which include beam combination elements, stabilization systems and the output parameters of the individual amplifiers. After an introduction to the topic, various ways of implementing coherent beam combination for ultrashort pulses are explored. Besides the spatial combination of beams, the combination of pulses in time will also be discussed. Recent experimental results will be presented, including multi-dimensional (i.e. spatial and temporal) combination. Finally, an outlook on possible further developments is given, focused on scaling the number of combinable beams and pulses.

We present a detailed investigation of X-ray emission from both flat and nanowire zinc oxide targets irradiated by 60 fs 5E16 W/cm^2 intensity laser pulses at a 0.8 µm wavelength. It is shown that the fluence of the emitted hard X-ray radiation in the spectral range 150–800 keV is enhanced by at least one order of magnitude for nanowire targets compared to the emission from a flat surface, whereas the characteristic Kα line emission (8.64 keV) is insensitive to the target morphology. Furthermore, we provide evidence for a dramatic increase of the fast electron flux from the front side of the nanostructured targets. We suggest that targets with nanowire morphology may advance the development of compact ultrafast X-ray sources with an enhanced flux of hard X-ray emission that could find wide applications in high energy density (HED) physics.

A series of phosphate glasses including two compositions that are similar to commercial laser glasses and 3 new compositions doped with 2 × 10^20 Er3+/cm3 were prepared by using the classical melt quenching technique. The new glass compositions show much better glass forming properties than the commercially available glasses, lower molecular weights and lower optical basicities which are expected to be advantageous for their luminescence and laser properties. From the UV–vis–NIR absorption spectra, detailed Judd–Ofelt analyses were conducted and the radiative properties of the luminescent levels of Er3+ in these host materials were calculated. In fact all three compositions show longer calculated luminescence lifetimes than the compositions that are based on commercially available laser glasses. The absorption and the emission cross sections, the luminescence lifetimes and the quantum efficiency at 1530 nm were investigated. LiZnLaAPF glass can be suggested as a good host to generate efficient lasing action at 1530 nm. The variation of the Judd–Ofelt intensity parameters Ω2, Ω4 and Ω6 is discussed with respect to the glass compositions and their properties. For this, the calculated Ω2, Ω4 and Ω6 values are compared to the results of numerous publications on Er3+ doped phosphate glasses. From this data a correlation with the symmetry at the local rare earth site (Ω2) and with the theoretical optical basicity (Ω6) of the glass composition can be assumed.

High-intensity femtosecond laser–plasma interaction experiments were performed to investigate laser–plasma wakefield acceleration in the “bubble” regime. Using a 15 TW laser pulse, the emission of side-scattered radiation was spectrally and spatially resolved and was consequently used to diagnose the evolution of the laser pulse during the acceleration process. Side-scattered emission was observed immediately before wavebreaking at a frequency of ωL + 1.7ωp (where ωL is the laser frequency and ωp is the background plasma frequency). This emission may result from scattering of laser light by large amplitude plasma oscillations generated in the shell of the wakefield “bubble” and which occurs immediately prior to the wavebreaking/injection process. The observed variation of the frequency of scattered light with electron density agrees with theoretical estimates.

Calculations of the magnetic hyperfine structure rely on the input of nuclear properties—nuclear magnetic moments and nuclear magnetization distributions—as well as quantum electrodynamic radiative corrections for high-accuracy evaluation in heavy atoms. The uncertainties associated with assumed values of these properties limit the accuracy of hyperfine calculations. For example, for the heavy alkali-metal atoms Cs and Fr, these uncertainties may amount collectively to almost 1% or 2%, respectively. In this paper, we propose a method for removing the dependence of hyperfine structure calculations on assumed values of nuclear magnetic moments and nuclear magnetization distributions by determining these effects empirically from measurements of the hyperfine structure for high states. The method is valid for s, p1/2, and p3/2 states of alkali-metal atoms and alkali-metal-like ions. We have shown that for s states, the dependence on QED effects may also be removed to high accuracy. The ability to probe the electronic wave functions, through hyperfine comparisons, with significantly increased accuracy is important for the analysis of atomic parity violation measurements, and it may enable the accuracy of atomic parity violation calculations to be improved. More broadly, it paves the way for further development of high-precision atomic many-body methods.

Quantum fluctuation effects have an irrefutable role in high-energy physics. Such fluctuation can be often regarded as a correction of the infrared (IR) limit. In this paper, the effects of the first-order correction of entropy, caused by thermal fluctuation, on the thermodynamics of charged black holes in gravity’s rainbow will be discussed. It will be shown that such correction has profound contributions to the high-energy limit of thermodynamical quantities and the stability conditions of black holes, and, interestingly, has no effect on thermodynamical phase transitions. The coupling between gravity’s rainbow and the first-order correction will be addressed. In addition, the measurement of entropy as a function of fluctuation of temperature will be covered, and it will be shown that the de Sitter case enforces an upper limit on the values of temperature and produces cyclic-like diagrams, while for the anti-de Sitter case, a lower limit on the entropy is provided; although for special cases a cyclic-like behavior could be observed, no upper or lower limit exists for the temperature. In addition, a comparison between non-correction and correction-included cases on the thermodynamical properties of solutions will also be discussed and the effects of the first-order correction will be highlighted. It will be shown that the first-order correction provides solutions with larger classes of thermal stability conditions, which may result in the existence of a larger number of thermodynamical structures for the black holes.

In this Letter, we present an optimized nonlinear amplification scheme in the 2 µm wavelength region. This laser source delivers 50 fs pulses at an 80 MHz repetition rate with exceptional temporal pulse quality and 20 W of average output power. According to predictions from numerical simulations, it is experimentally confirmed that dispersion management is crucial to prevent the growth of side pulses and an increase of the energy content in a temporal pedestal surrounding the self-compressed pulse. Based on these results, we discuss guidelines to ensure high temporal pulse quality from nonlinear femtosecond fiber amplifiers in the anomalous dispersion regime.

The focus of this article is on providing compact analytical expressions for the differential number of polarization-flipped signal photons constituting the signal of vacuum birefringence in the head-on collision of x-ray free electron (XFEL) and optical high-intensity laser pulses. Our results allow for unprecedented insights into the scaling of the effect with the waists and pulse durations of both laser beams, the Rayleigh range of the high-intensity beam, as well as transverse and longitudinal offsets. They account for the decay of the differential number of signal photons in the far field as a function of the azimuthal angle measured relative to the beam axis of the probe beam in the forward direction, typically neglected by conventional approximations. Moreover, they even allow us to extract an analytical expression for the angular divergence of the perpendicularly polarized signal photons. We expect our formulas to be very useful for the planning and optimization of experimental scenarios aiming at the detection of vacuum birefringence in XFEL/high-intensity laser setups, such as the one put forward at the Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields at the European XFEL.

We investigate theoretically the above-threshold ionization (ATI) of localized atomic targets by intense few-cycle Bessel pulses that carry orbital angular momentum (OAM), known also as twisted light. More specifically, we use the strong-field approximation (SFA) to compute the photoelectron energy spectra. While for plane-wave laser pulses the outgoing photoelectron is typically described by Volkov states within the SFA, no equivalent is known for an electron in a twisted laser field. Here, we therefore introduce a local dipole approximation for the (continuum) state of the photoelectron that is justified for few-cycle pulses. Based on this approximation, we demonstrate that the photoelectrons can also be emitted into the propagation direction of the pulse. When measured in propagation direction, moreover, we show that the magnitude of the ATI peaks depend on the opening angle and the (projection of) total angular momentum of the Bessel pulse.

With the emergence of high-repetition-rate few-cycle laser pulse amplifiers aimed at investigating ultrafast dynamics in atomic, molecular, and solid-state science, the need for ever faster carrier-envelope phase (CEP) detection and control has arisen. Here we demonstrate a high-speed, continuous, every-single-shot measurement and fast feedback scheme based on a stereo above-threshold ionization time-of-flight spectrometer capable of detecting the CEP and pulse duration at a repetition rate of up to 400 kHz. This scheme is applied to a 100 kHz optical parametric chirped pulse amplification few-cycle laser system, demonstrating improved CEP stabilization and allowing for CEP tagging.

We report on the possibility of controlling quantum random walks (QWs) with a step-dependent coin (SDC). The coin is characterized by a (single) rotation angle. Considering different rotation angles, one can find diverse probability distributions for this walk including: complete localization, Gaussian and asymmetric likes. In addition, we explore the entropy of walk in two contexts; for probability density distributions over position space and walker's internal degrees of freedom space (coin space). We show that entropy of position space can decrease for a SDC with the step-number, quite in contrast to a walk with step-independent coin (SIC). For entropy of coin space, a damped oscillation is found for walk with SIC while for a SDC case, the behavior of entropy depends on rotation angle. In general, we demonstrate that quantum walks with simple initiatives may exhibit a quite complex and varying behavior if SDCs are applied. This provides the possibility of controlling QW with a SDC.