Atomic and molecular strong-field physics at ultrafast x-ray sources

X-ray science is undergoing one of its greatest revolutions to date with the construction of intense x-ray free electron lasers in Stanford, USA (LCLS), Hamburg, Germany (XFEL), and Harima Science Garden City, Japan (SCSS). These are vast, several-hundred-million dollar machines that will provide x-ray pulses that are many million times brighter than current sources. Similarly groundbreaking are the emerging attosecond light sources based on intense, pulsed lasers; they are relatively inexpensive laboratory-size instruments. These two emerging radiation sources will enable radically new research and have unnumbered potential applications in materials science, chemistry, biology, AMO, condensed-matter, and plasma physics. My work contributes to a theoretical understanding of atoms and molecules in gas phase which are exposed to x rays and optical lasers. Specifically, I discuss in my talk: * Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) for x rays and ultrafast x-ray pulse shaping * Attosecond Ramsey scheme for Auger decay * Double core holes in laser-aligned molecules