Enhanced high harmonic generation in semiconductors by the excitation with multi-color pulses

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that multi-color laser pulses significantly enhance high harmonic generation in semiconductors like ZnO by leveraging intraband preacceleration, confirming a four-step model and enabling brighter attosecond light sources.

Contribution

It introduces a method to boost high harmonic intensities in semiconductors using multi-color pulses, supported by analysis of electron dynamics and validation of a four-step generation model.

Findings

Harmonic intensities increase by 2-3 orders of magnitude with multi-color excitation.

Intraband preacceleration is key to the enhancement of high harmonics.

Supports the four-step model for high harmonic generation in semiconductors.

Abstract

We investigate high-order harmonic generation in ZnO driven by linearly polarized multi-color pulses. It is shown that the intensities of the harmonics in the plateau region can be enhanced by two to three orders of magnitude when driven by two- or three-color fields as compared with the single-color pulse excitation. By analyzing the time-dependent population in the conduction band as function of both the initial and the moving crystal momenta, we demonstrate that this remarkable enhancement originates from the intraband preacceleration of electrons from their initial momenta to the top of the valence band where interband excitation takes place. We show that this preacceleration strongly increases the population in the conduction band and correspondingly the intensities of high harmonics in the plateau region. Our results confirm the very recently proposed four-step model for high harmonic generation in semiconductors [Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 193901 (2019)] and provide an effective way to enhance the intensities of harmonics in the plateau region which has significant implications for the generation of bright attosecond light sources from semiconductors.