TEMPORAL COHERENCE OF ULTRASHORT HIGH-ORDER HARMONIC PULSES

We have studied the temporal coherence of high-order harmonics (up to the 15th order) produced by focusing 100 fs laser pulses into an argon gas jet. We measure the visibility of the interference fringes, produ ced when two spatially separated harmonic sources interfere in the far field, as a function of the time delay between the two sources. In ge neral, we find long coherence times, comparable to the expected pulse durations of the harmonics. For some of the harmonics, the interferenc e pattern exhibits two regions, with significantly different coherence times. These results are interpreted in terms of different electronic trajectories contributing to harmonic generation. [S0031-9007(98)0556 9-7].