Femtosecond Harmonic Laser Photoemission: Physics and Chemistry

Abstract

High harmonic generation, one of the main focal points of this conference, provides an exceptional experimental capability through its application in photoelectron spectroscopy. The high harmonics produced when an intense femtosecond laser pulse is focussed into a puff of rare gas represents, at present the only widely tunable laboratory source of radiation available. Additionally, with the added benefit of the femtosecond nature of the harmonic pulses, time resolved experiments can be carried out. Excite-probe experiments, in which electrons are excited into normally empty states of the system under investigation, and then probed with photoelctron spectrsocopy, provide the means to follow the dynamic evolution of those electrons with exceptional time resolution. A wide variety of studies of this nature have been described in a recent review¹.