Temporal and spectral studies of high-order harmonics generated by polarization-modulated infrared fields

The temporal confinement of high harmonic generation (HHG) via modulation of the polarization of the fundamental pulse is studied in both temporal and spectral domains. In the temporal domain, a collinear cross-correlation setup using a 40 fs IR pump for the HHG and a 9 fs IR pulse to probe the generated emission is used to measure the XUV pulse duration. The observed temporal confinement is found to be consistent with theoretical predictions. An increased confinement is observed when a 9 fs pulse is used to generate the harmonics. An important spectral broadening, including a continuum background, is also measured. Theoretical calculations show that with 10 fs driving pulses, either one or two main attosecond pulses are created depending on the value of the carrier envelope phase.