Sturmian–Floquet approach to high-order harmonic generation

Abstract

We show that the Floquet approach with a Sturmian basis means an efficient description of high-order harmonic generation (HHG) with monochromatic excitation. This method, although it involves numerical calculations, is close to analytic approaches with a corresponding deeper insight into the dynamics. As a first application, we investigate the role of atomic coherence during the process of HHG: as shown, different coherent superpositions of initial atomic states produce observably different HHG spectra. For linearly polarized excitation, we demonstrate that the question whether the constituents of the initial superpositions are dipole coupled or not strongly influences the dynamics. By investigating time-dependent HHG signals, we also show that the preparation of the initial atomic state can be used for the control of the high-harmonic radiation.