ECI Webinar: "Comparison between the Molecular and Solid High Harmonics Generation"

News

Wednesday, the 23th of February 2022 @ 15h00 CET

Speaker: Kasia Kowalczyk

Imperial College London


Title of the talk : "DNA origami nanostructures as platforms to study radiation-induced damage to DNA"



Abstract: The high harmonics generation from bulk solids has been a prevalent topic in the last decade. In this talk I will try to present some similarities and differences in the experiments and theory of high harmonics generation (HHG) between single molecules and solids.

Apart from a potential for new, more compact attosecond pulse sources, the solid HHG allows for probing the medium itself, extracting the information from the harmonic spectrum. An ultrafast measurement would give us a real time window into the phenomena like charge screening or mapping the electron potential in crystals with angstrom resolution. This would allow for advancement in many optoelectronic technologies like information storage or solar energy production.

Since the news of successful HHG from bulk ZnO in 2011 [1], the ultra-fast field exploded with many theoretical and computational papers trying to explain the process. However, there are still many gaps to fill and the different theoretical approaches call for more systematic experimental study of the mechanism. This will help to establish a theoretical picture that allows for reliable experimental predictions. This talk will try to compare the theoretical approach that draws from the strong field approximation [2] to its counterpart, the scattering picture [3]. By probing with different samples with the same field and changing the chirp of the incoming pulse, our research hopes to give more insight into the process and thus promote a more in depth understanding of the phenomena.



References

  1. S. Ghimire, A. D. Dichiara, E. Sistrunk, P. Agostini, L. F. Dimauro, and D. A. Reis, "Observa- tion of high-order harmonic generation in a bulk crystal," Nature Physics, vol. 7, pp. 138-141, 12 2011.
  2. G. Vampa, B. G. Ghamsari, S. Siadat Mousavi, T. J. Hammond, A. Olivieri, E. Lisicka-Skrek, A. Y. Naumov, D. M. Villeneuve, A. Staudte, P. Berini, and P. B. Corkum, "Plasmon-enhanced high-harmonic generation from silicon," Nature Physics, vol. 13, pp. 659-662, 7 2017.
  3. H. Lakhotia, H. Y. Kim, M. Zhan, S. Hu, S. Meng, and E. Goulielmakis, "Laser picoscopy of valence electrons in solids," Nature, vol. 583, pp. 55-59, 7 2020