Attosecond Optical Spectroscopy of Monocrystalline Diamond

Achieving charge control in dielectrics with few-femtosecond laser pulses is a milestone that promises to increase the speed of data processing and information encoding beyond their current limits [1,2]. This important breakthrough cannot be reached without a deep knowledge of how real and virtual carrier dynamics influence the electro-optical properties of matter on ultrafast time scales [3]. For this reason, the interaction between short optical pulses and solids has gained the attention of a broad scientific community in the recent years [4]. Nevertheless, how to extract relevant physical information from the sub-fs transient optical features, observed when the target is pumped strongly out of equilibrium, is a formidable task that questions the applicability of macroscopic physical models upon which the spectroscopic technique is based.