All-optical spatio-temporal control of electron emission from SiO2 nanospheres with femtosecond two-color laser fields

Abstract

Field localization by nanostructures illuminated with laser pulses of well-defined waveform enables spatio-temporal tailoring of the near-fields for sub-cycle control of electron dynamics at the nanoscale. Here, we apply intense linearly-polarized two-color laser pulses for all-optical control of the highest energy electron emission from SiO _2 nanoparticles. For the size regime where light propagation effects become important, we demonstrate the possibility to control the preferential emission angle of a considerable fraction of the fastest electrons by varying the relative phase of the two-color field. Trajectory based semi-classical simulations show that for the investigated nanoparticle size range the directional steering can be attributed to the two-color effect on the electron trajectories, while the accompanied modification of the spatial distribution of the ionization rate on the nanoparticle surface has only a minor effect.

Keywords

• ultrafast nanophysics
• two-color laser fields
• spatio-temporal control
• dielectric nanospheres