title: Polarization pulse shaping induced by impulsive molecular alignment in optical filamentation and application to high-order harmonic generation.
abstract: We investigated theoretically and experimentally the ultrafast birefringence induced by impulsive alignment in a molecular gas during optical filamentation. This phenomenon is able to substantially affect the polarization state of an ultrashort laser pulse that propagates through the aligned medium at suitable delays from a first aligning pulse. We exploited this modulation of the polarization state in order to effectively control the high-order harmonic generation (HHG) process, which is strongly dependent on the driving pulse polarization. These results open new and fascinating perspectives for the tailoring of strong-field phenomena by means of polarization pulse shaping.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Politecnico di Milano & CNR-IFN, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci, 32, 20133 Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Negro
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Vozzi
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Calegari
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: De Silvestri
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Stagira