Observation of light-phase-sensitive photoemission from a metal.

We demonstrate that multiphoton-induced photoelectron emission from a gold surface caused by low-energy (unamplified) 4-fs, 750-nm laser pulses is sensitive to the timing of electric field oscillations with respect to the pulse peak. This observation confirms recent theoretical predictions and opens the door to measuring the absolute value of the carrier-envelope phase difference of few-cycle light pulses with a solid-state detector.

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