Bicircular high-harmonic spectroscopy reveals dynamical symmetries of atoms and molecules

We introduce bicircular high-harmonic spectroscopy as a new method to probe dynamical symmetries of atoms and molecules and their evolution in time. Our approach is based on combining a circularly polarized femtosecond fundamental field of frequency ω with its counterrotating second harmonic 2ω. We demonstrate the ability of bicircular high-harmonic spectroscopy to characterize the orbital angular momentum symmetry of atomic orbitals. We further show that breaking the threefold rotational symmetry of the generating medium-at the level of either the ensemble or that of a single molecule-results in the emission of the otherwise parity-forbidden frequencies 3qω  (q∈N), which provide a background-free probe of dynamical molecular symmetries.