Dependence of the gas phase high harmonic generation process on the driving laser-field duration and intensity

Ever since the advent of high-order harmonic generation, one of the main goals has been to maximize the high harmonic yield. This is due to the wide range of applications in multidisciplinary research fields, including nonlinear XUV optics and ultrafast science. Nowadays, intense laser-atom interactions are one of the primary sources of high-order harmonic generation, emitting radiation in the extreme ultraviolet (XUV) range. Although the scaling laws for XUV photon numbers have been extensively studied in the past, their dependence on the duration of the driving laser pulse has remained largely unexplored experimentally. This is because, in each of these studies, the XUV photon yield was optimized according to the specific characteristics of the lasers used and the corresponding XUV beamlines. In other words, there have been no systematic measurements on the dependence of XUV yield on the duration of the driving laser pulse. Here, by taking advantage of the SYLOS laser system at ELI ALPS, we are able to experimentally investigate this long-standing question. We found that for driving laser field intensities below the saturation threshold of harmonic generation, the harmonic yield depends linearly on the pulse duration. However, for laser intensities near to the harmonic yield saturation, the harmonic yield is inversely proportional to the pulse duration.