Atomic and macroscopic measurements of attosecond pulse trains

We characterize attosecond pulses in a train using both the well established “reconstruction of attosecond beating by interference of two-photon transitions” (RABITT) technique and the recently demonstrated in situ method, which is based on a weak perturbation of the harmonic generation process by the second harmonic of the laser field. The latter technique determines the characteristics of the single atom emission, while RABITT allows one to measure attosecond pulses “on target.” By comparing the results of the two methods, the influence of propagation and filtering on the attosecond pulses can be extracted.