Generation of an intense single isolated attosecond pulse by use of two-colour waveform control

Abstract

We theoretically demonstrate the generation of an intense single attosecond pulse by superposing a weak sub-harmonic pulse upon a sine-waveform few-cycle driving pulse. By use of a sine-waveform few-cycle pulse instead of its traditionally used cosine waveform counterpart, we show that efficient tunnel ionization for generating electrons which can revisit their parent ion with high kinetic energy can occur only once in the few-cycle laser field, leading to an increase of efficiency by nearly two orders of magnitude in single attosecond pulse generation as compared with the use of a cosine-waveform field.