Attosecond control of collective electron motion in plasmas

Today, light fields of controlled and measured waveform can be used to guide electron motion in atoms and molecules with attosecond precision. Here, we demonstrate attosecond control of collective electron motion in plasmas driven by extreme intensity (≈10 18 W cm −2 ) light fields. Controlled few-cycle near-infrared waves are tightly focused at the interface between vacuum and a solid-density plasma, where they launch and guide subcycle motion of electrons from the plasma with characteristic energies in the multi-kiloelectronvolt range—two orders of magnitude more than has been achieved so far in atoms and molecules. The basic spectroscopy of the coherent extreme ultraviolet radiation emerging from the light–plasma interaction allows us to probe this collective motion of charge with sub-200 as resolution. This is an important step towards attosecond control of charge dynamics in laser-driven plasma experiments. A demonstration of the ability to coherently control the collective attosecond dynamics of relativistic electrons driven through a plasma by an intense laser represents an important step in the development of techniques to manipulate and study extreme states of matter.