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We report an experimental measurement of nonlinear absorption by using the near-infrared femtosecond laser and a crystalline MgO sample. We show that the nonlinear absorption inside MgO presents a four-fold modulation as a function of the crystal alignment to the laser polarization. In different intensities and wavelengths, we observe that the modulation amplitude is changed. We introduce a model based on the calculation of the carrier density to explain the phenomenon. It shows that the varied modulation is due to the variation of effective electron mass, which is related to the crystal structure. Our work makes a step forward in the application of nonlinear absorption in exploring solid structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the switching between two surface plasmon polariton modes in a non-Hermitian system composed of a pair of graphene sheets using topological operations. The topological operation is implemented by suitably designing the waveguide geometry and the chemical potential of graphene, which is equivalent to changing the system parameters along a closed loop in the parameter space. Efficient and robust mode switching takes place as the loop encloses an exceptional point and the wave experiences a sufficiently large propagation length. Moreover, we show this mode switching is chiral, in the sense that the output modes are different for choosing different loop directions. The study provides a promising approach to robust mode switching on a deep-subwavelength scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By numerically solving the two-dimensional time-dependent Schrödinger equation, we investigate the strong-field photoelectron holography (SFPH) for different atomic and molecular targets. The results show that the photoelectron hologram is capable of providing structural information-the phase of scattering amplitude. In our calculations, the holographic pattern shifts with the target, indicating the phase difference between various targets. However, for the near-forward scattering, the phases of scattering amplitude for different targets are similar and thus no structural information has been retrieved in the previous works on near-forward scattering hologram. We suggest to use the backward scattering photoelectron hologram to extract this type of structural information. This paves a significant step towards time-resolved imaging of molecular structure and dynamics with the concept of SFPH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the three-dimensional semiclassical ensemble model, we studied the correlated electron dynamics in strong-field nonsequential double ionization of Xe by mid-infrared laser pulses over a wide range of laser intensities. Numerical results show that the correlated electron momentum distribution exhibits the strong back-to-back pattern at the lower laser intensity. It evolves into the side-by-side behavior as the laser intensity increases and presents the experimentally observed crosslike shape at high laser intensity. Different from the case of near-infrared region where recollision mainly occurs at the first returning, at the mid-infrared region recollision dominantly occurs at the later returnings. The windows of initial transverse velocity for the various multiple-returning recollision trajectories are different and are unambiguously determined by this semiclassical ensemble model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By numerically solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation, we theoretically investigate the holographic structure of the multiple-returning rescattering recorded in the photoelectron momentum distribution. In the orthogonally polarized two-color fields, we show that the interference patterns periodically oscillate with the relative phase. Tracing the relative phase where the oscillation minimizes, we find that the dependences of the phase on the parallel momentum for the first-returning and the second-returning rescattering holographic interferences are different. With the quantum-orbit model, we demonstrated that the difference is related to the ionization and rescattering times of the electron. Moreover, we show that the influence of the Coulomb interaction on the oscillation of both the first-returning rescattering and the second-returning rescattering holographic interferences can be ignored. This suggests us that the temporal characteristics of the electron can be resolved by analyzing the relative phase's dependence of the multiple-returning holographic interference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We calculate the photoelectron momentum distributions (PMDs) from strong-field above-threshold ionization of Ar in the co-linearly polarized two-color laser fields consisting a strong fundamental component and a much weaker second harmonic by solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. Utilizing the recently introduced phase-of-the-phase (PP) spectroscopy, we analyze the relative phase dependence of the PMDs of the recollision electrons and the jumps in the PP spectroscopy are observed. With the semi-classical model, we demonstrate that the phase jumps originate from the competition between the orbits where recollision occurs at different returnings. Thus, the relative contribution of the multiple-returning recollision orbits is unambiguously identified with the PP spectroscopy. Additionally, we show that the relative contribution of the multiple-returning recollision orbits depends on the laser wavelength and ellipticity. In elliptically polarized laser field, the yield of the high-energy photoelectrons favors the contribution of the second-returning recollision orbits. In 1600-nm laser field, the PP spectroscopy indicates that the relative contribution of multiple-returning recollision orbits is strongly sensitive to the electron energy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]