Intense supercontinuum generation exceeding 300eV using a two-color field in combination with a 400-nm few-cycle control pulse.

We propose a method to control the harmonic process by using a two-color field in combination with a 400-nm few-cycle control pulse for the generation of an ultra-broadband supercontinuum with high efficiency. The ionization and acceleration steps in the harmonic process can be simultaneously controlled by using a three-color field synthesized by a 2000-nm driving pulse and two weak 800-nm and 400-nm control pulses. Then an intense supercontinuum covered by the spectral range from 140eV to 445eV is produced. The 3D macroscopic propagation is also employed to select the short quantum path of the supercontinuum, then intense isolated sub-100-as pulses with tunable central wavelengths are directly obtained within water window region. In addition, the generation of isolated attosecond pulses in the far field is also investigated. An isolated 52-as pulse can be generated by using a filter centered on axis to select the harmonics in the far field. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America