Dramatic Spectral Broadening of Ultrafast Laser Pulses in Molecular Nitrogen Ions

We investigate nonlinear interaction of nitrogen molecules with a two-color laser field composed by an intense800 nm laser pulse and a weak 400 nm laser pulse.It is demonstrated that the spectrum of 400 nm pulses is dramatically broadened when the two beams temporally overlap.In comparison,the spectral broadening in argon is less pronounced,although argon atoms and nitrogen molecules have comparable ionization potentials.We reveal that the dramatic spectral broadening originates from the greatly enhanced nonlinear optical effects in the near-resonant condition of interaction between the 400 nm pulses and the nitrogen molecular ions.     

Generation of isolated attosecond pulses with a specific waveform two-color laser field

We theoretically propose a new method for generating intense isolated attosecond pulses during high-order harmonic generation (HHG) process by accurately controlling electron motion with a two-color laser field,which consists of an 800-nm,4-fs elliptically polarized laser field and a 1400-nm,～43-fs linearly polarized laser field.With this method,the supercontinua with a spectral width above 200 eV are obtained,which can support a ～15-as isolated pulse after phase compensation.Classical and quantum analyses explain the controlling effects well.In particular,when the pulse duration of the 800-nm laser field increases to 20-fs,sub-100-as isolated pulses can be obtained even without any phase compensation.