Precise and accurate measurements of strong-field photoionisation and a transferrable laser intensity calibration standard

Abstract

Ionization of atoms and molecules in strong laser fields is a fundamental process in many fields of research, especially in the emerging field of attosecond science. So far, demonstrably accurate data have only been acquired for atomic hydrogen (H), a species that is accessible to few investigators. Here we present measurements of the ionization yield for argon, krypton, and xenon with percentlevel accuracy, calibrated using H, in a laser regime widely used in attosecond science. We derive a transferrable calibration standard for laser peak intensity, accurate to 1.3%, that is based on a simple reference curve. In addition, our measurements provide a much-needed benchmark for testing models of ionisation in noble-gas atoms, such as the widely employed single-active electron approximation.

arXiv commentArticle: 5 pages, 2 figures, submitted to PRL (manuscript number LZ14457). Supplementary information: 7 pages, 6 figures, appended to end of main Article

References in corpus (2)

• Ultrashort filaments of light in weakly-ionized, optically-transparent media
• Experimental ionization of atomic hydrogen with few-cycle pulses

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Bound electron nonlinearity beyond the ionization threshold
• Observation of Dynamic Stark Resonances in Strong-Field Excitation
• Determination of the He-He, Ne-Ne, Ar-Ar, and H${}_2$ interaction potential by wave function imaging
• Phase- and intensity-resolved measurements of above threshold ionization by few-cycle pulses
• Scaling relations of the time-dependent Dirac equation describing multiphoton ionization of hydrogen-like ions
• Measuring laser carrier-envelope phase effects in the noble gases with an atomic hydrogen calibration standard
• Laser control of an excited-state vibrational wave packet in neutral H${}_2$