Nonlinear absorption and harmonic generation of laser in a gas with anharmonic clusters

The nonlinear absorption and harmonic generation of intense short pulse laser in a gas embedded with anharmonic clusters are investigated theoretically. When the laser induced excursion of cluster electrons becomes comparable to cluster radius, the restoration force on electrons no longer remains linearly proportional to the excursion. As a consequence, the plasmon resonance is broadened, leading to broadband laser absorption. It also leads to second and third harmonic generations, at much higher level than the one due to ponderomotive nonlinearity. The harmonic yield is resonantly enhanced at the plasmon resonance ω=ωpe/√(3), where ω is the frequency of the laser and ωpe is the plasma frequency of cluster electrons.