Enhanced XUV Harmonics Generation with an Intense Laser Field in the Overdriven Regime

Abstract

High-order harmonic generation with high photon flux has been a challenging task in strong-field physics. According to the high-order harmonic generation process, the essential requirements for achieving efficient harmonic radiations inside a gas medium are the improvement of the induced atomic dipole moment amplitude of the single-atom response in the microscopic and the phase matching of the high harmonics in the macroscopic medium. In this work, we demonstrated a feasible approach to enhance the extreme-ultraviolet harmonics in the plateau region by increasing the intensity of the driving laser while keeping the laser energy constant. The simulation results showed that by increasing the laser intensity to the overdriven regime, the average extreme-ultraviolet harmonics yield in the plateau region is approximately twice as high as that obtained optimally in the conventional loose focusing geometry scheme by utilizing a relatively low-intensity driving laser with the same laser energy. The quantitative analysis of the harmonics generation process in the macroscopic medium and the phase matching revealed that the observed enhancement in harmonics can be attributed to the amplification of the induced atomic dipole moment amplitude of the single-atom response in the high-intensity driving laser and the favorable transient phase matching in the overdriven regime. Furthermore, the investigation of the driving laser indicated that the favorable transient phase matching is caused by the spatiotemporal reshaping of the driving laser in the overdriven regime.