Combined action of the bound-electron nonlinearity and the tunnel-ionization current in low-order harmonic generation in noble gases.

We study numerically low-order harmonic generation in noble gases pumped by intense femtosecond laser pulses in the tunneling ionization regime. We analyze the influence of the phase-mismatching on this process, caused by the generated plasma, and study in dependence on the pump intensity the origin of harmonic generation arising either from the bound-electron nonlinearity or the tunnel-ionization current. It is shown that in argon the optimum pump intensity of about 100 TW/cm² leads to the maximum efficiency, where the main contribution to low-order harmonics originates from the bound-electron third and fifth order susceptibilities, while for intensities higher than 300 TW/cm² the tunnel-ionization current plays the dominant role. Besides, we predict that VUV pulses at 133 nm can be generated with relatively high efficiency of about 1.5 × 10⁻³ by 400 nm pump pulses.