Generation and application of a polarization-skewed attosecond pulse train
Weizhe Li, Feng He
Abstract
The high-order harmonic generation induced by a polarization-skewed laser pulse is studied by numerically simulating the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation. For the polarization-skewed laser pulse, each cycle points to different directions and steers the electron to different directions. The polarization of the harmonics generated by each cycle coincides with the polarization of the driving laser cycle. By synthesizing the harmonics, an attosecond pulse train is formed. In the train, each attosecond pulse is almost linearly polarized, but the adjacent pulses have different polarizations. To demonstrate the advantage of such an attosecond pulse train, we implement it to singly ionize the hydrogen atom. The photoelectron triggered by each attosecond pulse in the train has different momentum distribution, and the overall photoelectron momentum distribution presents fascinating structures, from which the ultrafast ionization can be recorded.