Attosecond Diffraction Imaging of Electron Dynamics in Solids

Abstract: Visualizing the electron dynamics in four dimensions of space and time is crucial to the understanding of several ubiquitous processes in nature. Hence, ultrafast X-ray and electron imaging tools have been developed to probe the dynamics of matter by means of the time-resolved diffraction imaging (TRDI). In this work, we report an extension of the theory underlying the TRDI to the case of the laser-driven electron dynamics in solid state systems. We demonstrate that the TRDI signal encodes essential information about the time-dependent electron density of the system under study and thus makes it possible to decipher the ultrafast quantum dynamics and the electron transfer phenomena in solids. We apply the developed approach to image the laser-driven electron dynamics in neutral graphene showing that the predictions made by the fully quantum version of the TRDI deviate significantly from those obtained with the conventional semiclassical approach.