Effect of nuclear motion on spectral broadening of high-order harmonic generation.

ABSTRACT

High-order harmonic generation (HHG) in molecular targets is experimentally investigated in order to reveal the role of the nuclear motion played in the harmonic generation process. An obvious broadening in the harmonic spectrum from the H2 molecule is observed in comparison with the harmonic spectrum generated from other molecules with relatively heavy nuclei. We also find that the harmonic yield from the H2 molecule is much weaker than the yield from those gas targets with the similar ionization potentials, such as Ar atom and N2 molecule. The yield suppression and the spectrum broadening of HHG can be attributed to the vibrational motion of nuclear induced by the driving laser pulse. Moreover, the one-dimensional (1D) time-dependent Schrödinger equation (TDSE) with the non-Born-Oppenheimer (NBO) treatment is numerically solved to provide a theoretical support to our explanation.