Switching off a high-harmonic polarization channel by anti-unitary symmetry

Abstract

We study polarization-resolved high-harmonic generation in a laser-driven two-leg Su--Schrieffer--Heeger ladder with asymmetric dimerization under periodic boundary conditions. A field linearly polarized along the ladder can generate both longitudinal and transverse radiation, whose harmonic content is controlled by lattice symmetry and electronic filling. Using symmetry analysis of the time-dependent density matrix, we show that reflection symmetry enforces odd-order harmonics in the longitudinal response and, when the transverse response is nonzero, even-order harmonics in the transverse direction. At half filling, an additional anti-unitary symmetry relating the occupied and empty bands suppresses the transverse current completely. A unitary chiral symmetry in the clean ladder relates the same bands but fails to enforce this cancellation, showing that band swapping alone is insufficient: the suppression requires both a density-matrix constraint that persists during the driven evolution and the appropriate transformation of the transverse-current operator. Moving away from half filling lifts this cancellation and allows transverse emission, while the reflection selection rule remains whenever reflection symmetry is preserved. Numerical calculations at quarter and half filling, combined with onsite potentials that selectively break the relevant symmetries, confirm these two distinct mechanisms. Thus, reflection symmetry determines which harmonic orders occur, whereas the interplay of anti-unitary symmetry and filling controls whether the transverse HHG channel is present at all.