Towards the complete phase profiling of attosecond wave packets

Abstract

Realistic attosecond wave packets have complex profiles that, in dispersive conditions, rapidly broaden or split in multiple components. Such behaviors are encoded in sharp features of the wave packet spectral phase. Here we exploit the quantum beating between one- and two-photon transitions in an attosecond photoionization experiment to measure the photoelectron spectral phase continuously across a broad energy range. Supported by numerical simulations, we demonstrate that this experimental technique is able to reconstruct sharp fine-scale features of the spectral phase, continuously as a function of energy and across the full spectral range of an attosecond pulse train. In a proof-of-principle experiment, we observe the periodic modulations of the spectral phase of an attosecond pulse train due to the individual chirp of each harmonic.