Laser-Driven Petahertz Electron Ratchet Nanobubbles (Luke Bhan, Cody L. Covington, and Kálmán Varga)
The ratchet consists of a series of disconnected bubble-shaped nanodiode structures with a sharp tip to induce a large field enhancement. A laser pulse is used to create a plasmon oscillation in the vertical direction, and the shape of the bubble funnels the electrons toward the sharp tip leading to net electron transport in the horizontal direction. The electron current carries the fingerprint of the driving laser field. The system is modeled by using the time-dependent orbital free density functional theory with nanostructures containing thousands of atoms.