Self-referenced sampling of attosecond visible-vacuum ultraviolet electric fields

Abstract The self-compression of few-cycle pulses based on soliton dynamics is an emerging approach for generating attosecond pulses covering the infrared to the vacuum ultraviolet spectral regions. Using this technique, we compress 28 fs laser pulses at 790 nm directly to an attosecond duration in a single gas-filled hollow core fiber. For the first time, the emitted sub-cycle pulse together with the resonant dispersive wave are field-resolved down to 120 nm . We show that the waveform measured via nonlinear photoconductive sampling (NPS) is reproducible over multiple days, and we experimentally probe the response function of NPS at petahertz frequencies by manipulating the carrier-to-envelope phase. The sub-cycle attosecond resolution combined with the relatively simple setup make field-resolved solitons a powerful platform for attosecond experiments.