An attosecond is the billionth of a billionth of a second (10^{-18}s).

A linear experimental setup traversed by one or more laser beams. A typical attosecond beamline like the AS-1 at LAP begins with a source producing intense few-cycle, few-femtosecond-duration laser pulses. The flashes subsequently pass through a number of optical devices until they reach a vacuum chamber where attosecond light flashes are born. Afterwards these attosecond light flashes together with the laser pulses producing them propagate through a vacuum system until ending up in final chamber where they are employed for experiments.
In HF beamlines ultra-intense flashes of laser light are guided directly through a vacuum apparatus to a chamber, where they are sharply focused on targets. The constituents of the targets are exposed to ultra-strong electric and magnetic fields of light this way. High-energy particles such as electrons, ions and photons result from the interaction.

A chirped mirror (CM) is a coating with controllable spectral reflectivity and phase. It is one of the key components to generate and support a short pulse. A chirped mirror is a multilayer coating. It consists of up to 200 thin film layers. Each part of a multilayer structure reflects only a certain frequency range of the light.
Light reflected from the deeper layers of the CM travels a longer distance than the light that reflects off the top layers. Therefore chirped mirrors can be designed to change the relative delay of different spectral components.

Light can be thought of as travelling electromagnetic waves. In some light emitters, such as a light bulb, there are many sources of these waves operating without knowing what their neighbors are doing: some will be at a maximum while others are at a minimum, they will have different colors, and so on. This type of light is called incoherent, and you can picture it as a room full of people talking over each other while not paying attention to what anyone else is saying. If everyone in the room said the same thing at the same time, however, the effect would be quite different. This is essentially what happens in a coherent light source such as a laser: something causes the sources to act in unison, and the waves that emerge add together constructively. Coherent light is made of waves that have a fixed relationship to one another in time, rising and falling in unison.

Systems for measuring the momentum distribution of ions and/or electrons originating from strong-field interactions. COLTRIMS (Cold Target Recoil Ion Momentum Spectroscopy) allows for the coincident detection of ions and electrons from one atom/molecule per laser shot.

A femtosecond is a millionth of a billionth of a second (10^{-15}s).

An harmonic of a given light wave (the fundamental) has a frequency given by the fundamental frequency multiplied by an integer. Electrons bound in atoms can be used to produce a harmonics of an intense laser pulse in a three-step process: (1) electrons are ionized at the maxima of the electric field of the laser, (2) the electrons are accelerated by the laser field to high energies, and (3) some of the accelerated electrons return to the atom, where they recombine and emit their excess energy as ultraviolet or x-ray photons. Because this process is controlled by the electric field of the laser, the emitted light is coherent. If the laser pulse contains several oscillations, bursts of coherent harmonic light will be emitted from each half-cycle of the light wave, with only the odd harmonics of the laser frequency adding constructively.

Infrared light is electromagnetic radiation whose wavelength spans between 720 nanometer and 1000 picometer. Optical infrared radiation is divided into three bands by the International Commission on Illumination:
IR-A for wavelengths between 700 nm and 1.400 nm – Some applications include fiber optic communication and night vision goggles.
IR-B for wavelengths between 1.400 nm and 3.000 nm – This band is most noted for its application in long-distance telecommunications.
IR-C for wavelengths between 3.000 nm and 1.000.000 nm – Typically used in the military, specifically in 'heat seeking' missiles as well as in thermal imaging.
Astronomers typically make use of practically all three bands to observe a wide variety of temperature ranges. The LAP team uses infrared light in the near infrared regime.

Ionized matter with high density containing ions and electrons generated for example by very intense lasers. The electrons move typically in the laser electro-magnetic field with velocities approaching the speed of light in vacuum. The density of the plasma is higher than the so called critical density, and so the laser pulse is reflected on the vacuum-plasma interface. These plasmas are very important for surface high harmonic generation.

Nanoplasmonics deals with collective electron dynamics on the surface of metal nanostructures, which arises as a result of excitations called surface plasmons. The surface plasmons localize and concentrate optical energy in nanoscopic regions at the metal surface creating highly enhanced local optical fields. Because of their broad spectral bandwidth, surface plasmons undergo ultrafast dynamics with timescales as short as a few hundred attoseconds.
Among numerous existing applications of nanoplasmonics, there are nanoantennas and waveguides for efficient coupling of light with semiconductor devices including photovoltaic cells and light-emitting diodes, biologically inert and stable labels for biomedical research, ultrasensitive detection and sensing of molecules and nanoscopic biological objects for biomedicine and defense, immunological tests including the pregnancy test and heart-attack test, near-field scanning optical ultramicroscopes, etc. In trials presently are plasmonic-enhanced HIV/AIDS test and plasmonic photothermal cancer therapy.
In the near future, the field of nanoplasmonics, which is undergoing rapid growth, could benefit applications as efficient generation of XUV radiation and ultrafast computing and information storage on the nanoscale, and the development of optoelectronic nanodevices.

In an attosecond pump-probe experiment a sample like the electrons in atoms of a rare gas or in a solid are excited by one pulse (pump). This pulse can consist of light, of X-rays or of electrons. The changes it induces in the sample are probed by the second pulse (probe). Both beams in combination allow real-time observation of the motion of electrons, provided that at least one pulse only lasts attoseconds.

Ionized matter containing ions and electrons generated for example by very intense lasers. The electrons move typically in the laser electro-magnetic field with velocities approaching the speed of light in vacuum. These plasmas are very important for among others laser driven electron-/ion acceleration, surface high harmonic generation.

An unduator is a device for synchrotron radiation facilities. It consists of a periodic structure of dipole magnets. The static magnetic field is alternating along the length of the undulator. Electrons traversing the periodic magnet structure are forced to undergo oscillations and radiate. The radiation produced by these electrons is very intense and can be used for example to produce X-rays for medical applications like investigating very small tumors.

Ultraviolet (UV) light is electromegnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light, but longer than x-rays, in the range from ten nanometer to 400 nanometer.

Velocity-map imaging (VMI) detectors are used to measure either ion or electron momentum distribution.

X-radiation is an electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have a wavelength in the range of 10 to 0.01 nanometers. In German, X-radiation is called "Röntgenstrahlung" named after Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, who is credited as their discoverer, and who had called them X-rays to signify an unknown type of radiation. The LAP-Team is about to produce X-rays with laser-accelerated electrons. These very fast electrons are focused in a so called undulator, where alternating magnetic fields force them on a sinusoidal course. The electrons produce X-rays while they oscillate through the undulator.