Attosecond pulse generation using incommensurate two-colour fields

Abstract

The process of high-harmonic generation from solid density surfaces results in a train of ultrashort attosecond pulses. Isolating a single attosecond pulse is of interest for many reasons such as atomic and molecular time-scale pump-probe experiments.1 We highlight, via Particle-in-Cell simulations, a viable route to pulse isolation using two colour fields with off integer harmonic frequencies, which allows subtle shaping of the incident laser field which when reflected by the plasma mirror, diminishes some pulses in the train resulting in the potential to isolate a single attosecond pulse.