Sub-cycle control of terahertz high-harmonic generation by dynamical Bloch oscillations

By O. Schubert, M. Hohenleutner, F. Langer, B. Urbanek, C. Lange, U. Huttner, D. Golde, T. Meier, Mackillo Kira, S. W. Koch and 1 more. Nature Photonics, 2014

910 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Ultrafast charge transport in strongly biased semiconductors is at the heart of high-speed electronics, electro-optics and fundamental solid-state physics1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13. Intense light pulses in the terahertz spectral range have opened fascinating vistas14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21. Because terahertz photon energies are far below typical electronic interband resonances, a stable electromagnetic waveform may serve as a precisely adjustable bias5,11,17,19. Novel quantum phenomena have been anticipated for terahertz amplitudes, reaching atomic field strengths8,9,10. We exploit controlled (multi-)terahertz waveforms with peak fields of 72 MV cm−1 to drive coherent interband polarization combined with dynamical Bloch oscillations in semiconducting gallium selenide. These dynamics entail the emission of phase-stable high-harmonic transients, covering the entire terahertz-to-visible spectral domain between 0.1 and 675 THz. Quantum interference of different ionization paths of accelerated charge carriers is controlled via the waveform of the driving field and explained by a quantum theory of inter- and intraband dynamics. Our results pave the way towards all-coherent terahertz-rate electronics. Terahertz waveforms with peak fields of 72 MV cm−1 and a central frequency of 30 THz drive interband polarization in bulk GaSe off-resonantly and accelerate excited electron–hole pairs, inducing dynamical Bloch oscillations. This results in the emission of phase-stable, high-harmonic transients over the whole frequency range of 0.1–675 THz.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/284de012259f4e9c1d4cbe0872681d8de821987a

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Citations in the corpus

High-harmonic generation in solids (2016, neutral): “(10) Thus, for strong excitations, the mutual coupling of polarization and carrier occupations will evolve Eq.”
Colloquium: Nonthermal pathways to ultrafast control in quantum materials (2021, background): “Examples include high-harmonic generation (Ghimire et al., 2011; Schubert et al., 2014; von Hoegen et al., 2018), subcycle electron and spin dynamics (Kampfrath et al., 2011; Schultze et al., 2013; Lucchini et al., 2016; Reimann et al., 2018), light-field-driven currents (Schiffrin et al., 2013;…”
Colloquium: Strong-field phenomena in periodic systems (2017, background): “…discussed: frequency dependence of the group delay (Garg et al., 2016; Hohenleutner et al., 2015; Wu et al., 2016) and the scaling of individual harmonics peak intensity with the driving field amplitude (Ghimire et al., 2011a; Hohenleutner et al., 2015; Luu et al., 2015; Schubert et al., 2014).”