Quantum-mechanical elaboration for the description of low- and high-order harmonics generated by extended gas media: prospects to the efficiency enhancement in spatially modulated media

Abstract

A simple model fully matching the description of the low- and high-order harmonic generation in extended media interacting with multicolor laser fields is proposed. The extended atomic media is modeled by a 1D chain of atoms, the number of atoms and the distance between them depend on the pressure of the gas and the length of the gas cell. The response of the individual atoms is calculated accurately in the frame of the non-perturbative theory where the driving field for each atom is calculated with account of dispersion properties of any multicolor field component. In spite of the simplicity of the proposed model it provides the detailed description of behaviour of harmonic spectra under variation of the gas pressure and medium length, it also predicts a scaling law for harmonic generation (an invariant). To demonstrate the wide range of applications of the model we have simulated the results of recent experiments dealing with spatially modulated media and obtained good coincidence between the numerical results and the experimental ones.