High harmonic generation by co-rotating bi-circular laser fields interaction with relativistic plasmas

Abstract

We present an investigation of high harmonic generation (HHG) from relativistic plasmas driven by two-color co-rotating circularly polarized (CP) laser fields at various frequency ratios ω 2 / ω 1. The theoretical analysis and the particle-in-cell simulation results reveal that when ω 2 / ω 1 ≥ 4, CP harmonics with opposite helicities can appear simultaneously due to the relativistic mirror effect and the related conservation laws. Meanwhile, the harmonic spectra features (including the HHG efficiency, the allowed harmonic orders, and their polarization states) can be tuned through adjusting the frequency and intensity ratio of the two driving field components. This finding might be helpful for a consummate understanding of the bi-circular HHG technique.