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High-harmonic generation in isolated atoms and molecules has been widely utilized in extreme ultraviolet photonics and attosecond pulse metrology. Recently, high-harmonic generation has been observed in solids, which could lead to important applications such as all-optical methods to image valance charge density and reconstruct electronic band structures, as well as compact extreme ultraviolet light sources. So far these studies are confined to crystalline solids; therefore, decoupling the respective roles of long-range periodicity and high density has been challenging. Here we report the observation of high-harmonic generation from amorphous fused silica. We decouple the role of long-range periodicity by comparing harmonics generated from fused silica and crystalline quartz, which contain the same atomic constituents but differ in long-range periodicity. Our results advance current understanding of the strong-field processes leading to high-harmonic generation in solids with implications for the development of robust and compact extreme ultraviolet light sources.Although higher harmonic generation from solids has become of interest in many fields, its observation is typically limited to crystalline solids. Here, the authors demonstrate that higher harmonics can be generated from amorphous solids.
You et al. (Fri,) studied this question.