Laser-driven tunneling photocurrent as a source of midinfrared to microwave multidecade supercontinua yoked to high-order harmonics

摘要： Electron tunneling induced by a strong-field laser driver can lead to an ultrafast stepwise buildup of the photoelectron density ρ. When the laser field is strong enough, each such step in the temporal profile of ρ is confined well within the field cycle, providing an ultrabroadband, multidecade force that drives the photoelectron current j. However, whether or not the photocurrent can emit electromagnetic radiation with such an extraordinarily broad spectrum depends on the damping, which defines the low-frequency cutoff in the spectrum of this radiation. We show that, with a suitable choice of the gas pressure and parameters of the laser driver, the laser-induced tunneling photocurrent can serve as a source of a remarkably broadband electromagnetic radiation with a multidecade spectrum stretching from the vacuum ultraviolet all the way down to the microwave range. We demonstrate that the supercontinuum fields emitted by individual photocurrent steps, induced by different field half cycles, can coherently combine, giving rise to well-resolved high-order harmonics on the high-frequency end of the spectrum yoked to a bright midinfrared to microwave supercontinuum, dominating the long-wavelength part of the multidecade radiation output.