Observation of few-cycle, strong-field phenomena in surface plasmon fields

We present experimental evidence of the generation of few-cycle propagating surface plasmon polariton wavepackets. These ultrashort plasmonic pulses comprised of only 2-3 field oscillations were characterized by an autocorrelation measurement based on electron photoemission. By exploiting plasmonic field enhancement, we achieved plasmon-induced tunnelling emission from the metal surface at low laser intensity, opening perspectives for strong-field experiments with low pulse energies. All-optical electron acceleration up to keV kinetic energy is also demonstrated in these surface-confined, few-cycle fields with only 1.35 x 10(12) W/cm(2) focused laser intensity. The experimental results are found to be in excellent agreement with the model. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America