Selective zoning of high harmonic emission using counter-propagating light.
High harmonic production can be dramatically increased by utilizing an interaction region much longer than a coherence length. Counter-propagating light pulses can be used to disrupt the out-of-phase harmonic emission from selected zones in the focus so that the remaining emission builds constructively. Counter-propagating light creates a standing field modulation repeating over a half laser wavelength in which phase cancellations for harmonic emission occur. A simple power-law model is used to demonstrate how such pulses can be designed to counteract geometrical phase mismatches and improve emission for individual harmonics by more than two orders of magnitude.
Peatross
J
J
Voronov
S
S
Prokopovich
I
I