We investigate the full spectrum in the two-level atomic system strongly driven by a fundamental laser field with its much weaker harmonic field whose frequency is within the cutoff domain and find that the spectrum lines are more plentiful and the plateau is significantly extended due to their interference.
We present the most prominent features in two-colour coherent control of high-order harmonic generation using a strongly driven two-level atom model, which are known to generate high harmonics as well as hyper-Raman lines with a plateau and a cut-off. Furthermore, for one laser field case, we find, when the hyper-Raman lines are located at the position of the high harmonics, that the high harmonics are strongly enhanced due to the interference effect between the high harmonics and the hyper-Raman lines. Within these conditions, by combining the laser field with another much weaker laser field, we show plentiful and strong high harmonics in the light spectrum of the driven atomic system.
Numerical results are presented on the spectrum of the light scattered into the vacuum modes by a two-level atom driven by a strong ramped field of frequency smaller than the natural atomic frequency. The attention is focused on the role of the hyper-Raman part of the spectrum, which is shown to decrease dramatically with increasing ramp time. It is suggested that this may explain lack of experimental observation of the hyper-Raman lines. For zero ramp time, the numerical intensity of both high-order harmonics and hyper-Raman peaks is shown to agree satisfactorily with previous analytical predictions except in the region of overlap of the two series of peaks. This lends support for the suggestion that the plateau in the spectrum is related to quantum-mechanical interference between high-order harmonics and hyper-Raman processes. There is also good agreement between the numerical amplitude of the plateau and previous analytical predictions. A physical mechanism for the cut-off frequency which terminates the plateau, based on approximate energy conservation in hyper-Raman transitions, is presented and is shown to be in agreement with present numerical and previous analytical results.
We investigate the coherent and incoherent contributions of the scattering spectrum of strongly driven two-level atoms as a function of the initial preparation of the atomic system. The initial ``phasing'' of the coherent superposition of the excited and ground states is shown to influence strongly the generation of both harmonics and hyper-Raman lines. In particular, we point out conditions under which harmonic generation can be inhibited at the expense of the hyper-Raman lines. Our numerical findings are supported by approximate analytical evaluation in the dressed state picture.
Harmonic generation is studied in an idealized model medium in which the laser field essentially interacts only with a single atomic transition and where ionization can be neglected. Such two-level models are known to generate high harmonics with a plateau and a cutoff. We put forward a quantitative rule for the cutoff frequency in the harmonic spectrum in this model which we relate to the ``IP+3UP rule'' in real systems with ionization. We examine the phase properties of the emitted harmonics and show that their coherence and thus phase matching is more favorable in the cutoff regime than in the plateau of the harmonic spectrum. This behavior is known to occur in realistic models of neon, and that this occurs also for the simple idealized two-level model strongly suggests that the sudden change of phase coherence from the cutoff to the plateau regime is as intrinsic a property of nonlinear systems as are the plateau and the cutoff.
The wave function of a two-level atom driven by a low-frequency laser pulse is obtained in analytical form and is used to determine the power spectrum of the dipole moment of the atom for different initial atomic states. The solution goes over some known approximate solutions and gives the energy of the two dressed states, the position of the hyper-Raman lines, the amplitudes both of the hyper-Raman lines and of the odd harmonics, and the position of the cutoff. The form of the hyper-Raman spectrum results independently of the initial atomic state and shows an onset and a cutoff of the emission.