Control of attosecond pulse generation with modulated polarization gating

Abstract

A new method is proposed to generate extreme ultraviolet supercontinuum. The polarization gating at 1600nm is employed to intensify the ellipticity dependence of high harmonic signal， and the addition of a second harmonic field is used for modulating the ionization ratio. Calculations show that a fundamental pulse up to 6 optical cycles (32.4fs) in duration can be applied to confine the efficient high harmonic generation to half an optical cycle. This feature allows us to produce an extreme ultraviolet supercontinuum with the bandwidth of about 280eV which supports generating a Fourier-transform-limited pulse of 10as. By selecting one part of the supercontinuum， a 100as pulse is obtained directly. In addition， the intensity utilizing efficiency of fundamental pulses can be increased by making the delay between the two pulses which compose the polarization gating smaller，when the modulated polarization gating is employed.