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

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.

arXiv comment6 pages, 3 figures

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Efficient high-harmonic generation in graphene with two-color laser field at orthogonal polarization
• Multiband dynamics of extended harmonic generation in solids under ultraviolet injection
• Edge-state and bulk-like laser-induced correlation effects in high-harmonic generation from a linear chain
• Edge-state-induced correlation effects in two-color high-harmonic generation
• Berry curvature and shift vector effects at high-order wave mixing in biased bilayer graphene
• Enhanced energy deposition and carrier generation in silicon induced by two-color intense femtosecond laser pulses
• Noncollinear phase-matching of high harmonic generation in solids