Inter-half-cycle spectral interference in high harmonic generation from monolayer MoS2

The enhancement of even-order harmonics near the cut-off of high-order harmonic spectra from monolayer MoS2 has been experimentally observed recently by several groups. Here we demonstrate that this enhancement can be interpreted as a result of spectral interference between half-cycles with opposite polarity by adopting a fully quantum mechanical calculation. We found that, due to the energy modulation induced by Berry connections, only half-cycles with the same polarity can generate high-order harmonics near the cut-off frequency, thus the lack of destructive interference leads to the enhanced intensity of the corresponding even-order harmonics. The explanation is supported by the frequency shift of the measured harmonic peaks. Our finding revealed the role of inter-half-cycle interference in high-harmonic generation (HHG) from non-centrosymmetric materials.