High-order harmonic generation by excited helium: The atomic polarization effect

Atomic polarization can have a profound effect on the generation of the high-order harmonics during the interaction of the polarized atom with intense field. In this work, the atomic polarization effect is investigated for the specific case of the 2 P-1 helium subject to infrared radiation. The strong coupling between the 2 P-1 and 2 S-1 states of helium is taken into account using a multichannel version of the strong-field approximation of Lewenstein and co-workers [ Lewenstein , Phys. Rev. A 49, 2117 (1994); Antoine , ibid. 53, 1725 (1996) ]. The analysis reveals a strong dependence of the high-order harmonic generation efficiency on the atomic polarization. While the occurrence of the predicted effect can be explained in terms of the recollision model, its magnitude is deeply affected by the fast population oscillations between the excited bound states. Moreover, the induced bound-bound transitions bring about the interesting double-maximum structure in the ellipticity dependences of the emitted harmonics, both maxima occurring for nonzero field ellipticities. This unusual structure shows up even for the high-energy harmonics generated solely by the bound-continuum mechanism.