Temperature-induced dephasing in high-order harmonic generation from solids

TL;DR

This paper investigates how increasing temperature affects high harmonic generation in solids, revealing dephasing effects and proposing a model to estimate electron-phonon scattering timescales, advancing understanding of strong-field solid-state physics.

Contribution

It introduces a temperature-dependent lattice vibration model and a formula for dephasing time, providing new insights into temperature effects on HHG in solids.

Findings

Lattice vibration does not produce even-order harmonics.

Dephasing increases with rising temperature.

A model predicts maximal photon energy in temperature-dependent HHG spectra.

Abstract

High harmonic generation (HHG) in solid and gaseous targets has been proven to be a powerful avenue for the generation of attosecond pulses, whereas the influence of electron-phonon scattering on HHG is a critical outstanding problem. Here we first introduce a temperature dependent lattice vibration model by characterizing the spacing fluctuation. Our results reveal that (i) structural disorder induced by lattice vibration does not lead to generation of even-order harmonics; (ii) dephasing of HHG occurs as the lattice temperature is growing; (iii) an open-trajectory picture predicts the maximal photon energy in the temperature-dependent HHG spectra. Moreover, a formula assessing dephasing time with lattice temperature is proposed to identify the timescale of electron-phonon scattering. This work paves a way to study non-Born-Oppenheimer effect in solids driven by strong field.