Spatiotemporal distortions of attosecond pulses

In this article, we report that usual multilayer mirror configurations to focus attosecond pulses generate geometric aberrations and can significantly stretch pulses. The numerical simulations show that the effects can be strong enough to delay some parts of the pulses of an attosecond pulse train and make them interfere with the next pulses of the train. The influence of the numerical aperture on the pulse duration is also studied, showing that such effects can occur even with very low numerical apertures.