We present theoretical investigations of high-order-harmonic generation (HHG) resulting from the interaction of noble gases with localized surface plasmons. These plasmonic near-fields are produced when a metal nanoparticle is subject to a few-cycle laser pulse. The enhanced field, which largely depends on the geometrical shape of the metallic nanostructure, has a strong spatial dependency. We demonstrate that the strong nonhomogeneity of this laser field plays an important role in the HHG process and leads to a significant increase of the harmonic-cutoff energy. In order to understand and characterize this feature, we include the functional form of the laser electric field obtained from recent attosecond streaking experiments [F. Süßmann and M. F. Kling, Proc. SPIE 8096, 80961C (2011)] in the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. By performing classical simulations of the HHG process we show consistency between them and the quantum-mechanical predictions. These allow us to understand the origin of the extended harmonic spectra as a selection of particular trajectory sets. The use of metal nanoparticles is an alternate way of generating coherent XUV light with a laser field whose characteristics can be synthesized locally.

• Received 11 February 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.87.041402