Disorder-induced effects in high-harmonic generation process in fullerene molecules

The objective of this article is to investigate the profound nonlinear optical response exhibited by inversion symmetric fullerene molecules under the influence of different types of disorders described by the Anderson model. Our aim is to elucidate the localization effects on the spectra of high harmonic generation in such molecules. We show that the disorder-induced effects are imprinted onto molecules’ high-harmonic spectrum. Specifically, we observe a presence of strong even-order harmonic signals already for relatively small disorders. The odd-order harmonics intrinsic for disorder-free systems are generally robust to minor disorders. Both diagonal and off-diagonal disorders lift the degeneracy of states, opening up new channels for interband transitions, leading to the enhancement of the high-harmonic emission. The second harmonic signal has a special behavior depending on the disorder strength. Specifically in the case of diagonal disorder, the second harmonic intensity exhibits a quadratic scaling with the disorder strength, which enables the usage of the harmonic spectrum as a tool in measuring the type and the strength of a disorder. •Disorder in fullerenes considerably reshapes the high harmonic generation spectrum.•Disorder causes strong even-order harmonics emission.•Disorder leads to an overall enhancement of the high-harmonic emission.•The second harmonic signal has a special behavior depending on the disorder strength.