Imaging of the umbrella motion and tunneling in the ammonia molecule by strong-field ionization

Abstract

The geometry-dependent ionization behavior of the ammonia molecule is investigated. Different theoretical approaches for obtaining the ionization yield are compared, all of them showing a strong dependence of the ionization yield on the inversion coordinate at long wavelengths ($\ge$ 800 nm). It is shown how this effect can be exploited to create and probe nuclear wave packets in neutral ammonia using Lochfraß. Furthermore, imaging of a wave packet tunneling through the barrier of a double-well potential in real time is discussed.

11 pages, 12 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Mechanisms of two-color laser-induced field-free molecular orientation
• Ionization behavior of molecular hydrogen in intense laser fields: Influence of molecular vibration and alignment

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Laser-induced dissociative ionization of H${}_2$ from the near-infrared to the mid-infrared regime