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Dynamically rich nature of the high-order harmonic generation process lends itself to a variety of ways to increase photon yield and extend the harmonic cut-off frequency. We show here that high-harmonic generation from an atom confined inside an attractive potential shell can show a dramatic increase in the photon yield in certain cases. We consider an endohedrally confined hydrogen atom inside a C$_{60}$ cage as an example, and consider three distinct physical situations in which the initial state is (1) entirely confined inside the C$_{60}$, (2) partially outside, and (3) mainly localized on the cage wall. We demonstrate that when the atom-cage system starts in a state with a classical turning point outside the C$_{60}$ shell, the high-harmonic photon yield can be enhanced up to 4 orders of magnitude when compared with a free atom in the same initial state. We explain the underlying physical mechanisms in each case using fully three-dimensional quantum simulations. This gives a prime example of how directly coupling an atom to a nanostructure can alter strong field processes in atoms in interesting ways., Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures

We propose a protocol for creating a fully entangled GHZ-type state of neutral atoms in spatially separated optical atomic clocks. In our scheme, local operations make use of the strong dipole-dipole interaction between Rydberg excitations, which give rise to fast and reliable quantum operations involving all atoms in the ensemble. The necessary entanglement between distant ensembles is mediated by single-photon quantum channels and collectively enhanced light-matter couplings. These techniques can be used to create the recently proposed quantum clock network based on neutral atom optical clocks. We specifically analyze a possible realization of this scheme using neutral Yb ensembles., Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures

We predict the possibility of "triply-magic" optical lattice trapping of neutral divalent atoms. In such a lattice, the ${^1}\!S_{0}$ and ${^3}\!P_{0}$ clock states and an additional Rydberg state experience identical optical potentials, fully mitigating detrimental effects of the motional decoherence. In particular, we show that this triply magic trapping condition can be satisfied for Yb atom at optical wavelengths and for various other divalent systems (Ca, Mg, Hg and Sr) in the UV region. We assess the quality of triple magic trapping conditions by estimating the probability of excitation out of the motional ground state as a result of the excitations between the clock and the Rydberg states. We also calculate trapping laser-induced photoionization rates of divalent Rydberg atoms at magic frequencies. We find that such rates are below the radiative spontaneous-emission rates, due to the presence of Cooper minima in photoionization cross-sections.

When atoms are exposed to intense laser or microwave pulses ~10% of the atoms are found in Rydberg states subsequent to the pulse, even if it is far more intense than required for static field ionization. The optical spectra of the surviving Li atoms in the presence of a 38 GHz microwave field suggest how atoms survive an intense pulse. The spectra exhibit a periodic train of peaks 38 GHz apart. One peak is just below the limit, and with a 90 V/cm field amplitude the train extends from 300 GHz above the limit to 3000 GHz below it. The spectra and quantum mechanical calculations imply that the atoms survive in quasi stable states in which the Rydberg electron is in a weakly bound orbit infrequently returning to the ionic core during the intense pulse.

We describe phase-dependent wavelength scaling of high-order harmonic generation efficiency driven by ultra-short laser fields in the mid-infrared. We employ both numerical solution of the time-dependent Schr\"{o}dinger equation and the Strong Field Approximation to analyze the fine-scale oscillations in the harmonic yield in the context of channel-closing effects. We show, by varying the carrier-envelope phase, that the amplitude of these oscillations depend strongly on the number of returning electron trajectories. Furthermore, the peak positions of the oscillations vary significantly as a function of the carrier-envelope phase. Owing to its practical applications, we also study the wavelength dependence of harmonic yield in the "single-cycle" limit, and observe a smooth variation in the wavelength scaling originating from the vanishing fine-scale oscillations., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

Because the commonly adopted viewpoint that the Keldysh parameter $\gamma $ determines the dynamical regime in strong field physics has long been demonstrated to be misleading, one can ask what happens as relevant physical parameters, such as laser intensity and frequency, are varied while $\gamma$ is kept fixed. We present results from our one- and fully three-dimensional quantum simulations of high-order harmonic generation (HHG) from various bound states of hydrogen with $n$ up to 40, where the laser intensities and the frequencies are scaled from those for $n=1$ in order to maintain a fixed Keldysh parameter $\gamma$$< 1$ for all $n$. We find that as we increase $n$ while keeping $\gamma $ fixed, the position of the cut-off scales in well defined manner. Moreover, a secondary plateau forms with a new cut-off, splitting the HHG plateau into two regions. First of these sub-plateaus is composed of lower harmonics, and has a higher yield than the second one. The latter extends up to the semiclassical $I_p+3.17U_p$ cut-off. We find that this structure is universal, and the HHG spectra look the same for all $n\gtrsim 10$ when plotted as a function of the scaled harmonic order. We investigate the $n$-, $l$- and momentum distributions to elucidate the physical mechanism leading to this universal structure.