Generation of Linear Isolated Sub-60 Attosecond Pulses by Combining a Circularly Polarized Pulse with an Elliptically Polarized Pulse**Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos 11404204 and 11447208, the Key Project of Chinese Ministry of Education under Grant No 211025, the Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China under Grant No 20111404120004,

Abstract

The two-color circularly polarized pulses scheme was proposed to generate isolated attosecond pulses in our previous work [Phys. Rev. A 87 (2013) 043406], while the polarization of the attosecond pulse was not investigated. We show a supplementary explanation of this scheme and present another scheme to generate linear isolated attosecond pulses by combining a circularly polarized pulse with an elliptically polarized pulse. High-order harmonic generation and quantum path control are investigated to compare these two schemes. Both schemes can obtain supercontinuum spectra plateau from about 200 eV to 550 eV, which belong to the water window region. It is found that the latter scheme can clearly eliminate the short quantum path and extend the harmonic plateau. A linear isolated attosecond pulse with a duration of sub-60 as can be generated by superposing a bandwidth of 70 eV.