Attosecond microscopy —Advances and outlook

¹ Institute of Physics, University of Oldenburg - 26129 Oldenburg, Germany
² NanoLund and Department of Physics, Lund University - Lund 22100, Sweden
³ Department of Ultrafast Dynamics, Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences - 37077 Göttingen, Germany
⁴ 4th Physical Institute–Solids and Nanostructures, University of Göttingen - 37077 Göttingen, Germany
⁵ Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research - 70569 Stuttgart, Germany
⁶ Institut de Physique, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne - 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
⁷ Department of Physics & Astronomy and California NanoSystems Institute, University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA, USA
⁸ Institute of Experimental Physics, Graz University of Technology - 8010 Graz, Austria
⁹ John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University - Cambridge, MA, USA

Received: 17 October 2024
Accepted: 28 January 2025

Abstract

Attosecond microscopy aims to record electron movement on its natural length and time scale. It is a gateway to understanding the interaction of matter and light, the coupling between excitations in solids, and the resulting energy flow and decoherence behavior, but it demands simultaneous temporal and spatial resolution. Modern science has conquered these scales independently, with ultrafast light sources providing sub-femtosecond pulses and advanced microscopes achieving sub-nanometer resolving power. In this perspective, we inspect the challenges raised by combining extreme temporal and spatial resolution and then highlight how upcoming experimental techniques overcome them to realize laboratory-scale attosecond microscopes. Referencing proof-of-principle experiments, we delineate the techniques’ strengths and their applicability to observing various ultrafast phenomena, materials, and sample geometries.