From sub-cycle pulses to
high-resolution microscopy
Our independent group “Femtosecond Fieldoscopy” is funded by the Max Planck Society and located at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light.
In femtosecond fieldoscopy, molecules are excited by ultrashort, phase-coherent pulses and the complex electric field of the transmitted light containing the molecular information is directly measured afterward. By using ultrashort pulses, the excitation is confined to a time window of tens of femtoseconds. Hence, the response emerging from the sample is separated temporally from the ultrashort excitation pulse allowing for high detection sensitivity and dynamic range.
Furthermore, measuring the complex electric field allows for extracting the full spectral phase information of the molecular response, adding a new dimension to the gained spectroscopic data.
By employing the state-of-the-art femtosecond laser technology and pushing the frontiers of field-detection technique towards petahertz frequencies, we are able to resolve complex electric field of light from visible down to terahertz.