Circularly polarized high harmonics generated by a bicircular field from inert atomic gases in the p state: A tool for exploring chirality-sensitive processes

S-matrix theory of high-order harmonic generation (HHG) is generalized to multielectron atoms. In the multielectron case the harmonic power is expressed via a coherent sum of the time-dependent dipoles, while for the one-electron models a corresponding incoherent sum appears. This difference is important for the inert atomic gases having a p ground state as used in a recent HHG experiment with a bicircular field [Nat. Photonics 9, 99 (2015)]. We investigate HHG by such a bicircular field, which consists of two coplanar counter-rotating circularly polarized fields of frequency r omega and s omega. Selection rules for HHG by a bicircular field are analyzed from the aspects of dynamical symmetry of the system, conservation of the projection of the angular momentum on a fixed quantization axis, and the quantum number of the initial and final atomic ground states. A distinction is made between the selection rules for atoms with closed [J. Phys. B 48, 171001 (2015)] and nonclosed shells. An asymmetry in emission of the left-and right-circularly polarized harmonics is found and explained by using a semiclassical model and the electron probability currents which are related to a nonzero magnetic quantum number. This asymmetry can be important for the application of such harmonics to the exploration of chirality-sensitive processes and for generation of elliptic or even circular attosecond pulse trains. Such attosecond pulse trains are analyzed for longer wavelengths than in Opt. Lett. 40, 2381 (2015), and for various field-component intensities.