Analog simulation of high harmonic generation in atoms

Abstract

The demanding experimental access to the ultrafast dynamics of materials challenges our understanding of their electronic response to applied strong laser fields. For this purpose, trapped ultracold atoms with highly controllable potentials have become an enabling tool to describe phenomena in a scenario where some effects are more easily accessible and twelve orders of magnitude slower. In this work, we introduce a mapping between the parameters of attoscience platform and atomic cloud simulators, and propose an experimental protocol to access the emission spectrum of high harmonic generation, a regime that has so far been elusive to cold atom simulation. As we illustrate, the benchmark offered by these simulators can provide new insights on the conversion efficiency of extended and short nuclear potentials, as well as the response to applied elliptical polarized fields or ultrashort few-cycle pulses.