Theory of attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy of strong-field-generated ions

Abstract

Strong-field ionization generally produces ions in a superposition of ionic eigenstates. This superposition is generally not fully coherent und must be described in terms of a density matrix. A recent experiment [E. Goulielmakis et al., Nature 466, 739 (2010)] employed attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy to determine the density matrix of strong-field-generated Kr+ ions. The experimentally observed degree of coherence of the strong-field-generated Kr+ ions is well reproduced by a recently developed multichannel strong-field-ionization theory. But there is significant disagreement between experiment and theory with respect to the degree of alignment of the Kr+ ions. In the present paper, the theory underlying attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy of strong-field-generated ions is developed. The theory is formulated in such a way that the nonperturbative nature of the strong-field-ionization process is systematically taken into account. The impact of attosecond pulse propagation effects on the interpretation of experimental data is investigated both analytically and numerically. It is shown that attosecond pulse propagation effects cannot explain why the experimentally determined degree of alignment of strong-field-generated Kr+ ions is much smaller than predicted by existing theory.

23 pages, 4 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev. A

References in corpus (4)

• Band-selective Measurement of Electronic Dynamics in VO2 using Femtosecond Near Edge X-ray Absorption
• Quantum state-resolved probing of strong-field-ionized xenon atoms using femtosecond high-order harmonic transient absorption spectroscopy
• Femtosecond induced transparency and absorption in the extreme ultraviolet by coherent coupling of the He 2s2p (1P0) and 2p2 (1Se) double excitation states with 800 nm light
• An x-ray probe of laser-aligned molecules

Cited by in corpus (33)

• Simulating pump-probe photo-electron and absorption spectroscopy on the attosecond time-scale with time-dependent density-functional theory
• Theory of Attosecond Transient Absorption Spectroscopy of Krypton for Overlapping Pump and Probe Pulses
• First-principles nonequilibrium Green's function approach to transient photoabsorption: Application to atoms
• Probing the longitudinal momentum spread of the electron wave packet at the tunnel exit
• Non-equilibrium Bethe-Salpeter equation for transient photo-absorption spectroscopy
• Some Exact Properties of the Nonequilibrium Response Function for Transient Photoabsorption
• Nuclear-Motion Effects in Attosecond Transient Absorption Spectroscopy of Molecules
• Core-valence attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy of polyatomic molecules
• Atomic and molecular dynamics triggered by ultrashort light pulses on the atto- to picosecond time scale
• Two-dimensional spectral interpretation of time-dependent absorption near laser-coupled resonances
• Coherent electronic-vibrational dynamics in deuterium bromide probed via attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy
• Nonlinear coherence effects in transient-absorption ion spectroscopy with stochastic extreme-ultraviolet free-electron laser pulses
• Spin-Orbit Effects in Atomic High-Harmonic Generation
• In situ characterization of few-cycle laser pulses in transient absorption spectroscopy
• Controlling the $2p$ Hole Alignment in Neon via the $2s$-$3p$ Fano Resonance
• First-principles simulations for attosecond photoelectron spectroscopy based on time-dependent density functional theory
• Imaging electron dynamics with time- and angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy
• Light-Induced Structures in Attosecond Transient Absorption Spectroscopy of Molecules
• Imaging interatomic electron current in crystals with ultrafast resonant x-ray scattering
• Theoretical analysis of the role of complex transition dipole phase in XUV transient-absorption probing of charge migration
• Attosecond XUV probing of vibronic quantum superpositions in Br${}_2^{+}$
• Imaging instantaneous electron flow with ultrafast resonant x-ray scattering
• Virtual single-photon transition interrupted: time-gated optical gain and loss
• Imaging Electron Dynamics with Ultrashort Light Pulses: A Theory Perspective
• Attosecond transient-absorption spectroscopy of polar molecules
• Probing Vibronic Coherence in Charge Migration of Molecules Using Strong Field Sequential Double Ionization
• Electronic-vibrational dynamics and coherence in x-ray transient absorption of N2+ induced by strong-field ionization
• Deterministic strong-field quantum control
• Transient-absorption phases with strong probe and pump pulses
• Stimulated resonant inelastic x-ray scattering with chirped, broadband pulses
• Control of valence-electron motion in Xe cations using the stimulated-Raman-adiabatic-passage technique
• Simulating strong-field electron-hole dynamics in solids probed by attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy
• Nonadiabatic theory for subcycle ionic dynamics in multielectron tunneling ionization