High harmonic interferometry of the Lorentz force in strong mid-infrared laser fields

Abstract

The interaction of intense mid-infrared laser fields with atoms and molecules leads to a range of new opportunities, from the production of bright, coherent radiation in the soft x-ray range to imaging molecular structures and dynamics with attosecond temporal and sub-angstrom spatial resolution. However, all these effects, which rely on laser-driven recollision of an electron removed by the strong laser field and the parent ion, suffer from the rapidly increasing role of the magnetic field component of the driving pulse: the associated Lorentz force pushes the electrons off course in their excursion and suppresses all recollision-based processes, including high harmonic generation, elastic and inelastic scattering. Here we show how the use of two non-collinear beams with opposite circular polarizations produces a forwards ellipticity which can be used to monitor, control, and cancel the effect of the Lorentz force. This arrangement can thus be used to re-enable recollision-based phenomena in regimes beyond the long-wavelength breakdown of the dipole approximation, and it can be used to observe this breakdown in high-harmonic generation using currently-available light sources.

References in corpus (12)

• Bright Coherent Ultrahigh Harmonics in the keV X-Ray Regime from Mid-Infrared Femtosecond Lasers
• Generation of phase-matched circularly-polarized extreme ultraviolet high harmonics for magnetic circular dichroism spectroscopy
• A practical scheme for generating isolated elliptically polarized attosecond pulses using bi-chromatic counter rotating circularly polarized laser fields
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• Partitioning of the linear photon momentum in multiphoton ionization
• High-order above-threshold ionization: the uniform approximation and the effect of the binding potential
• Spin conservation in high-order-harmonic generation using bicircular fields
• Microscopic laser-driven high-energy colliders
• Coherent hard x-rays from attosecond pulse train-assisted harmonic generation
• High harmonic interferometry of the Lorentz force in strong mid-infrared laser fields
• Phase-matched coherent hard x-rays from relativistic high-order harmonic generation
• Macroscopic aspects of relativistic x-ray assisted high-order harmonic generation

Cited by in corpus (6)

• On the Quantum-Optical Nature of High Harmonic Generation
• Magnetic fields alter tunneling in strong-field ionization
• High harmonic interferometry of the Lorentz force in strong mid-infrared laser fields
• Electrons in intense laser fields with local phase, polarization, and skyrmionic textures
• High order Brunel harmonics and supercontinuum formed by a weak optical pump in presence of a strong terahertz field
• Polarization of chirality