Spatial and spectral properties of high-order harmonics in the few-optical-cycle regime

Summary form only given. The recent availability of high-peak-power few-optical-cycle light pulses has opened the way to the investigation of light-matter interaction in the strong-field regime with unprecedented temporal resolution. In particular high-order harmonic generation in the few-optical-cycle regime is attractive for the generation of soft-x-ray pulses with duration down to the sub-femtosecond range. In this work we present both an experimental and a theoretical analysis of harmonic generation with sub-10-fs light pulses obtained using the hollow-fiber compression technique. To observe the harmonic emission we used a high-resolution x-ray spectrometer, based on a chirped grating and a high-resolution CCD detector.