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We investigate the crystal-momentum-resolved contributions to high-order harmonic generation in laser-driven graphene by semi-conductor Bloch equations in the velocity gauge. It is shown that each harmonic is generated by electrons with the specific initial crystal momentum. The higher harmonics are primarily contributed by the electrons of larger initial crystal momentum because they possess larger instantaneous energies during the intra-band motion. Particularly, we observe circular interference fringes in the crystal-momentum-resolved harmonics spectrum, which result from the inter-cycle interference of harmonic generation. These circular fringes will disappear if the inter-cycle interference is disrupted by the strong dephasing effect. Our findings can help to better analyze the mechanism of high harmonics in graphene.

Nonresonant multiphoton ionization by femtosecond laser pulses can be applied to any molecule virtually, thereby greatly enhancing the scope of Stark decelerated molecules. For comparison, we detect decelerated and trapped ammonia molecules using two different schemes: (i) nonresonant multiphoton ionization using intense femtosecond (fs) pulses in the near infrared, and (ii) resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization using nanosecond (ns) pulses from a tunable UV laser. The observed number of ions per shot for both schemes is similar. The fs laser detection scheme suffers from an increased background, which can be effectively eliminated by subsequent mass and velocity selection. To determine the detection volume of the ns laser detection scheme, we present measurements in which the decelerated ammonia molecules are bunched to a packet with a longitudinal spread well below ∼100 μm. It is concluded that the detection volume for the ns laser detection scheme is 1.5–2 times larger than that of the fs laser detection scheme.

We theoretically investigate terahertz emission from solid materials pumped by intense two-color femtosecond laser field in the presence of decoherence effects. Quantum-mechanical simulations are based on the length gauge semiconductor Bloch equations describing the optical excitation and decoherence with phenomenological dephasing and depopulation times. Contributions of interband and intraband mechanisms are identified in time domain, and the latter has dominated THz generation in solid-state systems. It is found that dephasing is crucial for enhancing asymmetric intraband current and deduced that solid-state materials with short dephasing time and long depopulation time would be optimal selection for strong-field terahertz generation experiments.

Above-band-gap optical excitation of electron-hole pairs screens the doping-induced surface electric field and generates terahertz (THz) pulses via free-carrier transport. THz emission from a heavily doped silicon surface is much weaker than that of lightly doped samples. A polarity reversal of the THz electric field is observed in heavily doped p-type silicon, indicating that the doping related and carrier induced surface electric fields oppose each other. By comparing the penetration depth of the excitation laser with the thickness of the depletion layer for the doped silicon, it is shown that competition between diffusion and drift current causes the polarity reversal.

We demonstrated the generation and characterization of 9.7 fs, 180 μJ pulses centered at 385 nm via the frequency doubling of few-cycle near-infrared pulses. Both moderate conversion efficiency (9.5%) and broad phase matching bandwidth (20 nm) were achieved by shaping the spectra of the fundamental pulses. The strong intensity dependence of second-order harmonic generation and well controlled material dispersion ensured the inexistence of satellite pulses, which was confirmed by the self-diffraction frequency resolved optical gating measurement.

Isolated attosecond pulses with a duration of 88 as are generated in the spectral range of 29–72 eV using double optical gating technique. The gate width is set to be shorter than half the optical cycle to avoid carrier envelop phase stabilization of the 4.2 fs driving laser pulses centered at 800 nm. The attosecond pulse duration is measured with the technique of frequency resolved optical gating for complete reconstruction of attosecond bursts.

We present the experimental and theoretical details of our recent published letter Huang et al (2015 Phys. Rev. Lett. 115 123002) on synchronized high-harmonic and terahertz-wave spectroscopy (HATS) from nonadiabatically aligned nitrogen molecules in dual-color laser fields. By associating alignment-angle dependent terahertz wave generation (TWG) with high harmonic generation (HHG), the angular differential photoionization cross section (PICS) for molecules can be reconstructed. The angles at which the PICS's minima are located show great convergence between the theoretical predictions and the experimentally deduced results when choosing a suitable internuclear distance. We also show the optimal relative phase between the dual-color laser fields for TWG does not change with the alignment angle at a precision of about 50 attoseconds. This all-optical method provides an alternative for investigating molecular structures and dynamics.

Argon atom ionizing in the ultrafast two-colour field has been used to investigate the physical mechanism of terahertz (THz) generation. We measured simultaneously pulse energies of THz and high-harmonics as the phase delay between the fundamental and its second harmonic was varied. The optimal phase delay of THz generation is determined according to the inherent attochirp of the emitted high-harmonics. The dynamic analysis of the tunnelling electron wave packet driven by the Coulomb–laser coupling shows that laser-assisted soft collisions of the electron wave packet with the atomic core play a key role. It is demonstrated that the rescattering process, being indispensable in high-harmonic generation processes, dominates THz wave generation as well in a more elaborate way.