Imaging Atoms in Regular Structures via High Harmonic Generation

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

Citations

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/fj2363608

Abstract

Throughout history many of the most significant advancements in science led to new ways of probing smallerand smaller into the world around us. By developing the first high magnification lenses Hooke and Leeuwen-hoek were able to discover the nature of the microscopic world teaming with life, Geiger and Mardsen discovered the structure of the atom in 1908 by scattering alpha particle off of gold plates, and the Stan-dard Model was confirmed in 2013 with the detection of the Higgs Boson using the high powered scattering experiments at the Large Hadron Collider.

Throughout the sciences, and especially in physics, microscopy has been a nearly universal tool for prob-ing deeper into the systems we are interested in. Improving the resolution of these microscopes, how smallof an object we can make out, has thus been an ongoing area of research for nearly 500 years. In 1873 ErnstAbbe placed the lower limit of the resolution of a microscope at one half the illuminating wavelength [4].In effect, the way to probe smaller is then to reduce the wavelength of illumination. Since then significantresources have been focused into research how develop lower and lower wavelength microscopes.

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