Abstract

Attosecond (as) physics has become a wide spreaded and still growing research field over the last decades. It allows for probing and controlling core- and outer shell electron dynamics with never before achieved temporal precision. High harmonic generation in gases in combination with advanced extreme ultraviolet (XUV ) optical components enable the generation of isolated attosecond pulses as required for absolute time measurements. But until recently, single attosecond pulse generation has been restricted to the energy range below 100 eV due to the availability of sources and attosecond optics. Multilayer mirrors are the up to date widest tunable optical components in the XUV and key components in attosecond physics from the outset. In this thesis, the design, fabrication and measurement of periodic and aperiodic XUV multilayer mirrors and their application in the generation and shaping of isolated attosecond pulses is presented. Two- and three material coatings based on a combination of molybdenum, silicon, boron carbide, lanthanum and scandium covering the complete spectral range between 30 and 200 eV are developed and characterized. Excellent agreement between reflectivity simulations and experiments is based on the highly stable ion beam sputter deposition technique. It allows for atomically smooth deposition and the realization of aperiodic multilayer structures with high precision and reproducibility. XUV reflectivity simulation of lanthanum containing multilayer coatings are based on an improved measured set of optical constants, introduced in this thesis. This work enabled the generation of the shortest ever measured isolated light pulses so far, the creation of the first isolated attosecond pulses above 100 eV , the first demonstration of absolute control of the “attochirp” by means of multilayer mirrors and the formation of spectrally cleaned attosecond pulses, in a spectral region which lacks appropriate filter materials, for a never before achieved combination of spectral and temporal resolution at 125 eV . Here presented concepts are in principle not restricted to specific energies or experimental set-ups and may be extended in the near future to enter completely new regimes of ultrashort physics.