GENERATION OF HARMONICS DURING SCATTERING OF LASER-RADIATION FROM A METAL-SURFACE HAVING AN ARTIFICIALLY LARGE WORK FUNCTION

We consider the generation of harmonics during the scattering of laser radiation from a metal surface. The metal will be described by Sommer feld's free-electron model and we artificially assume the metal to hav e an infinitely large work function. Contrary to what has been observe d for a real metal, in our model the evaluated harmonic rates show the formation of a plateau, if plotted as a function of the harmonic orde r n. Apparently, the depth of the potential well has some influence on the plateau-formation.