English

High harmonic generation from surface states of solids

Optics 2018-05-02 v1

Abstract

We demonstrate that high-harmonic generation (HHG) in solids dominantly originates from strongly localized surface states through non-perturbative processes. Measurements reveal that HHG from bulk states is suppressed by at least 1-2 orders of magnitude due to the lack of phase matching, when generated perturbatively, or by at least 3-4 orders of magnitude, when generated non-perturbatively. We derive a theory that fully supports this observation and quantitatively describes the generation of harmonics from the surface states as well as from interfaces between solids; it also predicts a much weaker generation of harmonics from the bulk states. Our results pave the way for the development of very high repetition rate high harmonic sources for vacuum ultraviolet spectroscopy and high precision frequency comb metrology using surface states from solids.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1805.00388,
  title  = {High harmonic generation from surface states of solids},
  author = {J. Seres and E. Seres and C. Serrat and T. Schumm},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1805.00388},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

OCIS codes: 190.4160 Multiharmonic generation; 140.7240 UV, EUV, and X-ray lasers; 140.3590 Lasers, titanium; 190.7110 Ultrafast nonlinear optics; 240.4350 Nonlinear optics at surfaces

R2 v1 2026-06-23T01:41:45.691Z