EPJ D Topical Issue on Quantum Aspects of Attoscience

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Published on 24 October 2022

This collection of articles contains contributions arising from the virtual conference Quantum Battles in Attoscience. The conference attracted more than 300 attendees from 34 different countries, and has spawned a successful series of bimonthly, online seminars – the so called 'AttoFridays'.

The aim of this novel workshop format was to support constructive debate about areas of controversy in attosecond science, and the centrepiece of the conference program were the Quantum Battles - an interactive, structured debate between early career researchers from competing groups in each field. These three battles – on tunnelling, interference and imaging in intense laser fields, and analytical vs ab initio theoretical approaches – have been written up as articles for this collection and each serves as an in-depth review of the topics, and the controversies therein. Alongside these are several articles on the quantum aspects of attosecond science including decoherence and entanglement in strong or tailored fields and ultrafast dynamics in novel materials. The collection is thus unusual in that it spans fundamental atomic and quantum physics all the way up to quantum technologies.