Correlations between the final momenta of electrons and their initial phase-space distribution in the process of tunnel ionization

Abstract

We present both full quantum mechanical and semiclassical calculations of above threshold ionization (ATI) of a hydrogen atom in the tunneling regime by a few-cycle linearly polarized infrared laser pulse. As a quantum treatment, we applied the direct integration of the time dependent Schrödinger equation (TDSE). In the semiclassical approximation (SCA), it is assumed that wavepacket propagation in the post-tunneling process can be well described within the classical framework. With these two methods, we analyze the similarities and deviations for ionization of the hydrogen atom. We found that the 3 dimensional semiclassical method can describe reasonably well the momentum correlation pattern of the ATI peaks. We also show good agreement between the results obtained by TDSE method and the semi-classical method. Furthermore, with the semiclassical approximation we clearly identify and separate the regions in momentum distributions of the ejected electrons according to initial conditions. We illustrate the corresponding regions with typical electron trajectories.

7 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Semiclassical two-step model for strong-field ionization
• The tunneling model of laser-induced ionization and its failure at low frequencies
• Slalom in complex time: emergence of low-energy structures in tunnel ionization via complex time contours
• Ionization of the hydrogen atom by intense ultrashort laser pulses
• Atomic coherence effects in few-cycle pulse induced ionization

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Restricted space ab initio models for double ionization by strong laser pulses