Strong-field and attosecond physics in solids

We review the status of strong-field and attosecond processes in bulk transparent solids near the Keldysh tunneling limit. For high enough fields and low-frequency excitations, the optical and electronic properties of dielectrics can be transiently and reversibly modified within the applied pulse. In Ghimire et al (2011 Phys. Rev. Lett. 107 167407) non-parabolic band effects were seen in photon-assisted tunneling experiments in ZnO crystals in a strong mid-infrared field. Using the same ZnO crystals, Ghimire et al (2011 Nat. Phys. 7 138-41) reported the first observation of non-pertubative high harmonics, extending well above the bandgap into the vacuum ultraviolet. Recent experiments by Schubert et al (2014 Nat. Photonics 8 119-23) showed a carrier envelope phase dependence in the harmonic spectrum in strong-field 30 THz driven GaSe crystals which is the most direct evidence yet of the role of sub-cycle electron dynamics in solid-state harmonic generation. The harmonic generation mechanism is different from the gas phase owing to the high density and periodicity of the crystal. For example, this results in a linear dependence of the high-energy cutoff with the applied field in contrast to the quadratic dependence in the gas phase. Sub-100 attosecond pulses could become possible if the harmonic spectrum can be extended into the extreme ultraviolet (XUV). Here we report harmonics generated in bulk MgO crystals, extending to ∼ 26 eV when driven by ∼35 fs, 800 nm pulses focused to a ∼1 VÅ^-1 peak field. The fundamental strong-field and attosecond response also leads to Wannier-Stark localization and reversible semimetallization as seen in the sub-optical cycle behavior of XUV absorption and photocurrent experiments on fused silica by Schiffrin et al (2013 Nature 493 70-4) and Schultze et al (2013 Nature 493 75-8). These studies are advancing our understanding of fundamental strong-field and attosecond physics in solids with potential applications for compact coherent short-wavelength sources and ultra-high speed optoelectronics.