Abstract

Structured laser beams–coherent light beams with non-trivial spatio(temporal) distributions of polarization, phase or intensity–have emerged as unique tools to unravel the electronic dynamics at the ultrafast and nanometric scales. A paradigmatic example is high-order harmonic generation (HHG) driven by structured beams, whose deep understanding has triggered the emergence of a wide variety of high-frequency structured laser sources with light topologies that evolve at ultrafast timescales [1]. HHG has been mainly studied in atomic and molecular gases, but recent experiments performed in solids have stimulated the exploration of non-perturbative electronic dynamics in crystals. Crystalline solids stand out as targets for HHG not only because of their higher electronic density–leading to better efficiency of the harmonics–but also due to their characteristic symmetries, which introduce distinctive ultrafast phenomena, such as the matter-Talbot effect [2] or the anisotropic HHG [3, 4].

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