Bi-chromatic driver enabled control of high harmonic generation in atomic targets

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how bi-chromatic laser pulses with controlled phase and delay can optimize high harmonic generation in atoms, enabling tunable cutoff energies and attosecond pulse production.

Contribution

It introduces a method to control high harmonic generation using bi-chromatic laser parameters, including frequency ratio, CEP, and time delay, to optimize cutoff energy and harmonic yield.

Findings

Optimal CEP and time delay maximize harmonic cutoff energy.

Harmonic yield scales with the square root of CEP.

Attosecond pulses of approximately 200 as are generated with varying CEP.

Abstract

We investigated the high-order harmonic generation by interacting time-delayed, linearly polarized bi-chromatic laser pulses with the atomic target. The frequency ratio of secondary to primary fields ($\omega_2/\omega_1$), along with the relative carrier-envelope-phase (CEP) and respective time-delay between the two pulses, are very instrumental in controlling the ionization of the electron and so the quantum dynamics in continuum. We observed an optimum CEP ($\phi$) and time delay ($t_d$) for a given bi-chromatic frequency ratio, giving maximum cutoff energy. We studied the effect of CEP and time delay for fixed frequency ratio and observed that the harmonic cutoff could be controlled in an experimentally feasible way. Moreover, the harmonic yield in the energy range 140 eV $-$ 240 eV is also calculated, and it is observed that the harmonic yield scales as $\propto -\sqrt{\phi}$. The attosecond pulses for different CEP is also calculated by superposing the harmonics in the same energy range, and $\sim 200$ as pulses are observed with peak intensity decreasing with CEP, following the variation of respective harmonic yield with CEP.