Having the shortest optical and soft x-ray fields as a part of its repertoire, attosecond physics has recently opened up new avenues for exploring ultrafast electronic processes in atoms, molecules, surfaces and nanostructures. We will discuss how the advancement of the “ultrafast toolbox” allow, the exploration and control of fundamental electronic phenomena in the nanoscale. By endowing essential x-ray spectroscopies of solids with attosecond temporal resolution, light fields, combined with extreme ultraviolet pulses, offer access into the attosecond dephasing of electronic excitation in the condensed matter. They also offer new opportunities of study and control of the field-induced emission of electrons from nanostructured metals enabling the generation and control of attosecond electron pulses.
[1] Wirth A. et al., Science 334, 195 (2011). [2] Hassan M. Th et al., Nature 530, 66 (2016) [3] Goulielmakis E. et al., Science 317, 769 (2007). [4] Moulet A. et al., Science 374,1134 (2017) [5] Kim H.Y. et al., submitted (2020)