Absolute phase control of intense few-cycle pulses and steering the atomic-scale motion of electrons

In the past few years, ultrafast laser technology has developed to
such a degree that the phase of a pulse under its envelope is now a
meaningful measurable quantity. Many experiments now require the
use of pulses with a fixed phase. The reliable production of such
pulses, over extended periods of time, is of key importance to many
areas of science. The central theme of this thesis is the
generation of intense phase-controlled few-cycle optical pulses and
their applications. This thesis reports on substantial improvements
made in the generation of carrier-envelope phase-controlled pulses.
Measurements performed show the accuracy to which absolute phase
can be controlled has been improved to a unpreceded level. Also,
the period of time over which such high accuracy measurements could
be performed was extended by more than a factor of five, such that
carrier-envelope phase-sensitive measurements that take longer than
24 hours without any breaks are now possible. With these tools at
hand, physical processes that take place on sub-femtosecond time
scales can be precisely measured, and control over the motion of
bound electrons is possible. In this thesis, a report on the first
demonstration of the latter is presented: In the dissociation of
the D_2^+ -ion, control over the localisation of the remaining
electron is demonstrated.