Qingbin Zhang

Ultra-short isolated attosecond emission in mid-infrared inhomogeneous fields without CEP stabilization

We theoretically investigate high-order harmonic generation in a spatially inhomogeneous field with mid-infrared driving wavelength and few-cycle duration. It is found that this spatiotemporally synthesized electric field is powerful to control the quantum path; as a result an ultra-broadband supercontinuum with bandwidth over 300 eV can be obtained successfully. Important characteristics of the attosecond pulse generation, including temporal envelope, harmonic chirp and carrier–envelope phase (CEP) dependence are further discussed. The results show that close-to-Fourier-limit 27 as isolated pulses are straightforwardly filtered from the supercontinuum. Moreover, such short isolated attosecond pulses can be supported by nearly all the CEPs of the laser electric field. This would open a way to obtain broadband isolated attosecond pulses with no need of CEP stabilization of the laser field.

Multi-cycle laser-driven broadband supercontinuum with a modulated polarization gating

We propose a method to generate broadband supercontinuum with a modulated polarization gating in the multi-cycle regime. The polarization gating at 1600 nm is employed to intensify the ellipticity dependence of high harmonic signal, and the adding second harmonic (SH) field is used for modulating ionization ratio between the driving field half-cycles. It is shown that longer driving pulses (6 optical cycles, 32.4 fs) can be applied to confine the efficient recollision of electron wave packet to half an optical cycle. The produced bandwidth of the extreme ultraviolet (XUV) supercontinuum is about 280 eV, corresponding to a fourier-transform-limited pulse of 10 as. In addition, an attosecond pulse of about 100 as with tunable wavelength can be straightforwardly obtained just by filtering different range of the spectrum.

Broadband water window supercontinuum generation with a tailored mid-IR pulse in neutral media

We propose a new (to our knowledge) scheme to generate a broadband water window supercontinuum in a neutral rare-gas media. Using a phase-stabilized few-cycle mid-IR pulse tailored by a much weaker 800 nm pulse, a supercontinuum from 265 to 425 eV is observed, and the ionization probability is below 0.1%. The nonionized media enable us to adopt the right phase-matching technique to select the short path of the supercontinuum, and an isolated 80 as pulse with a central wavelength of 3.2 nm is straightforwardly obtained.

Dual-chirped optical parametric amplification for generating few hundred mJ infrared pulses.

An ultrafast high-power infrared pulse source employing a dual-chirped optical parametric amplification (DC-OPA) scheme based on a Ti:sapphire pump laser system is theoretically investigated. By chirping both pump and seed pulses in an optimized way, high-energy pump pulses can be utilized for a DC-OPA process without exceeding the damage threshold of BBO crystals, and broadband signal and idler pulses at 1.4 μm and 1.87 μm can be generated with a total conversion efficiency approaching 40%. Furthermore, few-cycle idler pulses with a passively stabilized carrier-envelope phase (CEP) can be generated by the difference frequency generation process in a collinear configuration. DC-OPA, a BBO-OPA scheme pumped by a Ti:sapphire laser, is efficient and scalable in output energy of the infrared pulses, which provides us with the design parameters of an ultrafast infrared laser system with an energy up to a few hundred mJ.

Controlling nonsequential double ionization via two-color few-cycle pulses.

Using the classical three-dimensional ensembles, we have demonstrated the controlling of dynamics in nonsequential double ionization (NSDI) of helium by two-color few-cycle pulses. By changing the relative phase of the two pulses, recollisions leading to NSDI can be restricted in a time interval of several hundreds attosecond nearly before the field extremum and as a result, the correlated electron momentum distribution exhibits a so-far unobserved narrow arc-like structure. This structure reveals a novel energy correlation between the two electrons from NSDI by two-color few-cycle pulses.

Spectrally resolved spatiotemporal features of quantum paths in high-order harmonic generation

We experimentally disentangle the contributions of different quantum paths in high-order-harmonic generation (HHG) from the spectrally and spatially resolved harmonic spectra. By adjusting the laser intensity and focusing position, we simultaneously observe the spectrum splitting, frequency shift, and intensity-dependent modulation of harmonic yields both for the short and long paths. Based on the simulations, we discriminate the physical mechanisms of the intensity-dependent modulation of HHG due to the quantum path interference and macroscopic interference effects. Moreover, it is shown that the atomic dipole phases of different quantum paths are encoded in the frequency shift. In turn, it enables us to retrieve the atomic dipole phases and the temporal chirps of different quantum paths from the measured harmonic spectra. This result gives an informative mapping of spatiotemporal and spectral features of quantum paths in HHG.

Few-cycle attosecond pulses with stabilized-carrier-envelope phase in the presence of a strong terahertz field

High-order harmonic generation in the presence of a strong terahertz field is investigated, and phase stabilization of the few-cycle laser pulses is extended to the extremely ultraviolet region. It is found that the strong terahertz field significantly breaks the symmetry between the consecutive half-cycle and greatly extends the harmonic cutoff, producing both odd and even harmonics which are covered with an extremely broad bandwidth and well locked in phase. These results can support the generation of few-cycle attosecond pulse trains with stabilized carrier-envelope phase from pulse to pulse, and also enables the generation of phase-stabilized pulse train with tunable wavelength.

Attosecond Probing of Nuclear Dynamics with Trajectory-Resolved High-Harmonic Spectroscopy

We report attosecond-scale probing of the laser-induced dynamics in molecules. We apply the method of high-harmonic spectroscopy, where laser-driven recolliding electrons on various trajectories record the motion of their parent ion. Based on the transient phase-matching mechanism of high-order harmonic generation, short and long trajectories contributing to the same harmonic order are distinguishable in both the spatial and frequency domains, giving rise to a one-to-one map between time and photon energy for each trajectory. The short and long trajectories in H_{2} and D_{2} are used simultaneously to retrieve the nuclear dynamics on the attosecond and ångström scale. Compared to using only short trajectories, this extends the temporal range of the measurement to one optical cycle. The experiment is also applied to methane and ammonia molecules.

Mid-infrared modulated polarization gating for ultra-broadband supercontinuum generation

We propose a method to control the harmonic process by a mid-IR modulated polarization gating for the effective generation of an ultra-broadband supercontinuum in the neutral rare-gas media. Using a mid-IR polarization gating pulse modulated by a weaker 800-nm linearly polarized pulse, the ionization, acceleration and recombination steps in the harmonic process are simultaneously controlled, leading to the efficient generation of an ultra-broadband supercontinuum covered by the spectral range from ultraviolet to water window x ray under the low ionization rate. The right phase-matching technique is employed to macroscopically select the short quantum path of the supercontinuum, then isolated sub-100-as pulses with tunable wavelengths are directly obtained. This supercontinuum also supports the pulse duration far below one atomic unit of time.

Coulomb-corrected molecular orbital tomography of nitrogen.

High-order harmonic generation (HHG) from aligned molecules has provided a promising way to probe the molecular orbital with an Ångström resolution. This method, usually called molecular orbital tomography (MOT) replies on a simple assumption of the plane-wave approximation (PW), which has long been questioned due to that PW approximation is known to be valid in the keV energy region. However, the photon energy is usually no more than 100 eV in HHG. In this work, we experimentally reconstruct the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) of nitrogen (N2) by using a Coulomb-corrected MOT (CCMOT) method. In our scheme, the molecular continuum states are described by a Coulomb wave function instead of the PW approximation. With CCMOT, the reconstructed orbital is demonstrated to agree well with the theoretical prediction and retain the main features of the HOMO of N2. Compared to the PW approximation method, the CCMOT shows a significant improvement in eliminating the artificial structures caused by PW approximation.