High-order-harmonic generation by enhanced plasmonic near-fields in metal nanoparticles

T. Shaaran*, M. F. Ciappina, R. Guichard, J. A. Pérez-Hernández, L. Roso, M. Arnold, T. Siegel, A. Zaïr, M. Lewenstein

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

80 Scopus citations

Abstract

We present theoretical investigations of high-order-harmonic generation (HHG) resulting from the interaction of noble gases with localized surface plasmons. These plasmonic near-fields are produced when a metal nanoparticle is subject to a few-cycle laser pulse. The enhanced field, which largely depends on the geometrical shape of the metallic nanostructure, has a strong spatial dependency. We demonstrate that the strong nonhomogeneity of this laser field plays an important role in the HHG process and leads to a significant increase of the harmonic-cutoff energy. In order to understand and characterize this feature, we include the functional form of the laser electric field obtained from recent attosecond streaking experiments in the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. By performing classical simulations of the HHG process we show consistency between them and the quantum-mechanical predictions. These allow us to understand the origin of the extended harmonic spectra as a selection of particular trajectory sets. The use of metal nanoparticles is an alternate way of generating coherent XUV light with a laser field whose characteristics can be synthesized locally.

Original languageEnglish
Article number041402
JournalPhysical Review A - Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
Volume87
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 11 Apr 2013
Externally publishedYes

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