https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/s10053-025-01109-4
Regular Article - Photons
Attosecond pulse generation using high-order harmonic generation in argon gas based on the enhancement effect of multilayer plasmonics
1
Department of Physics, Faculty of Basic Sciences, Lorestan University, Khorramabad, Islamic Republic of Iran
2
Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Vali-e-Asr University of Rafsanjan, Rafsanjan, Islamic Republic of Iran
a
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Received:
1
July
2025
Accepted:
7
December
2025
Published online:
31
January
2026
This study explores the potential for high-harmonic generation (HHG) from argon atomic gas and single attosecond pulse generation by leveraging amplified and hyper-focused short laser pulses through a plasmonic nanostructure. The plasmonic nanostructure features triangular nanobowties with multilayer compositions of dielectrics and metals, supported by an insulating substrate. Within the nanobowtie gap, localized surface plasmons significantly enhance the laser field intensity over a substantial volume of the gap. Fine-tuning the geometric parameters of this structure achieves up to 45-fold amplification (< 17 dB) within the central wavelength of 800 nm of a standard titanium–sapphire laser. This enhancement enables the argon atoms introduced via a gas jet to exhibit a pronounced nonlinear response, leading to high-intensity HHG under incident pulses of relatively low intensity (1012 W/cm2). Based on the harmonic spectrum observed, the generation of isolated attosecond pulses with a temporal width of 33.37 attoseconds is achievable, notably without necessitating chirp mitigation techniques.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to EDP Sciences, SIF and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2026
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
