Simulation of sub-femtosecond response in laser-assisted field emission

Numerical methods are used to simulate the response of field emission to incident pulses of optical radiation, with the objective of determining the criteria to reduce the time for response of the emitted current to the radiation. The results of these simulations suggest that a sub-femtosecond response may be achieved by increasing the power flux density of the radiation, and decreasing the applied static field. An intrinsic delay in the response is shown to correspond to the semiclassical time for traversal of the barrier by quantum tunneling.