Regular Article

Generation of single attosecond pulse within one atomic unit by using multi-cycle inhomogeneous polarization gating technology in bowtie-shaped nanostructure

¹ Laboratory of Modern Physics, Liaoning University of Technology, Jinzhou 121001, P.R. China
² State Key Laboratory of Molecular Reaction Dynamics, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian 116023, P.R. China
³ School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Liaoning University of Technology, Jinzhou 121001, P.R. China

^a e-mail: attophys_lngy@126.com

Received: 18 October 2017
Received in final form: 1 February 2018
Published online: 10 April 2018

Abstract

The generations of high-order harmonic spectra and single attosecond pulses (SAPs) driven by the multi-cycle inhomogeneous polarization gating (PG) technology in the bowtie-shaped nanostructure have been theoretically investigated. It is found that by setting the bowtie-shaped nanostructure along the driven laser polarization direction, not only the extension of the harmonic cutoff can be achieved, caused by the surface plasmon polaritons, but also the modulations of the harmonics can be decreased, caused by the PG technology and the inhomogeneous effect. As a result, the contribution of the harmonic plateau is only from one harmonic emission peak with the dominant short quantum path. Further, by properly adding a half-cycle pulse into the driven laser field, the harmonic emission process can be precisely controlled in the half-cycle duration and a supercontinuum with the bandwidth of 263 eV can be obtained. Finally, by directly superposing the harmonics from this supercontinuum, a SAP with the full width at half maximum of 23 as can be obtained, which is shorter than one atomic unit.