Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

My proposal is centered around the interaction of intense laser light with solids at the intersection of ultrafast photonics, nanophotonics, and condensed matter physics. Part I of my proposal focuses on laser intensities below material damage threshold. Recently high harmonic generation (HHG) in solids was demonstrated experimentally. As harmonic radiation is emitted on a laser sub-cycle time scale (~femtosecond (fs)), it results in the emission of attosecond (asec) pulses. This has created the field of attosecond and strong field solid state physics. Over the past few years my theoretical work has substantially contributed to shaping this field. Part I of my proposal builds on these results which puts me in a very good position to continue making key contributions. More groups have started moving into the field; as time is of essence, I request 1PDF, PhD #1 and MSc #1 to conduct the suggested quantum theory research. It will be focused on key questions of practical and fundamental relevance. How can we make attosecond solid state radiation sources more efficient and therewith practically relevant? How can HHG in solids be used to develop new diagnostic methods for materials, such as measuring the valence electron density, and time resolving ultrafast processes, such as collective excitations? To answer these questions new theoretical tools and models will have to be developed. Among those, my research will drive forward (non-perturbative) many-body quantum dynamics which has remained one of the major challenges of theoretical physics. Part II is about applications of the microscopic particle in cell (MicPIC) method which solves classical many-body dynamics self-consistently with laser propagation. It allows us to bridge the microscopic and macroscopic dynamics of light matter evolution. MicPIC captures many-body Coulomb interaction and resulting correlation to all orders which is a unique capacity. This is important for laser material interaction at higher intensities where damage occurs and a classical solid density plasma is created. There is no other method that can model the resulting strongly coupled plasma dynamics correctly. Part of my proposal will be focused on understanding the importance of collisions and plasma nano-fields in laser material machining. This will result in optimization of laser manufacturing processes. The second part will be focused on nano-photonics and the enhancement of strong field and nonlinear processes through nano-antennas and nano-resonators. Although MicPIC was not developed for this purpose we found it well suited to model the nonlinear response of metallic nano-systems. I will use MicPIC to gain insights on topical problems such as plasmon enhanced HHG and nonlinear optics which cannot be reliably modeled by any other approach. Due to the uniqueness of MicPIC there is less time pressure. This is why I request PhD #2 and MSc #2 for part II and no PDF.