We study the influence of the pulse duration on high harmonic generation (HHG) with exploring a wide laser-parameter region theoretically. Previous studies have showed that for high laser intensities near to the saturation ionization intensity, the HHG inversion efficiency is higher for shorter pulses since the ground-state depletion is weaker in the latter. Surprisingly, our simulations show this high efficiency also appears even for a moderate laser intensity at which the ionization is not strong. A classical effect relating to shorter travel distances of the rescattering electron in shorter pulses, is found to contribute importantly to this high efficiency. The effect can be amplified significantly as a two-color laser field is used, suggesting an effective approach for increasing the HHG yield.
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