Above-threshold ionization and photoelectron spectra in atomic systems driven by strong laser fields

Abstract

Above-threshold ionization (ATI) results from strong field laser-matter interaction and it is one of the fundamental processes that may be used to extract electron structural and dynamical information about the atomic or molecular target. Moreover, it can also be used to characterize the laser field itself. Here, we develop an analytical description of ATI, which extends the theoretical Strong Field Approximation (SFA), for both the direct and re-scattering transition amplitudes in atoms. From a non-local, but separable potential, the bound-free dipole and the re-scattering transition matrix elements are analytically computed. In comparison with the standard approaches to the ATI process, our analytical derivation of the re-scattering matrix elements allows us to study directly how the re-scattering process depends on the atomic target and laser pulse features -we can turn on and off contributions having different physical origins or corresponding to different physical mechanisms. We compare SFA results with the full numerical solutions of the time-dependent Schroedinger equation (TDSE) within the few-cycle pulse regime. Good agreement between our SFA and TDSE model is found for the ATI spectrum. Our model captures also the strong dependence of the photoelectron spectra on the carrier envelope phase of the laser field.

29 pages, 6 figures, submitted to PRA

References in corpus (4)

• Accurate retrieval of structural information from laser-induced photoelectron and high-harmonic spectra by few-cycle laser pulses
• Spatio-temporal isolation of attosecond soft X-ray pulses in the water window
• Imaging an aligned polyatomic molecule with laser-induced electron diffraction
• Formation of very low energy states crossing the ionization threshold of argon atoms in strong mid-infrared fields

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Attosecond Field Emission
• Quantum electrodynamics of intense laser-matter interactions: A tool for quantum state engineering
• Strong laser fields and their power to generate controllable high-photon-number coherent-state superpositions
• High-order harmonic generation in atomic and molecular systems
• Above-Threshold Ionization and Laser-Induced Electron Diffraction in Diatomic Molecules
• Holographic interference in atomic photoionization from a semiclassical standpoint
• Above-threshold ionization (ATI) in multicenter molecules: the role of the initial state
• Inversion of Strong Field Photoelectron Spectra for Molecular Orbital Imaging
• Sub-barrier recollisions and the three classes of tunneling time delays in strong-field ionization
• Forward-backward asymmetry of photoemission in C${}_{60}$ excited by few-cycle laser pulses
• The impact of the carrier envelope phase -- dependence on system and laser parameters