Maximum Elliptical Dichroism in Atomic Two-Photon Ionization

Abstract

Elliptical dichroism is known in atomic photoionization as the difference in the photoelectron angular distributions produced in nonlinear ionization of atoms by left- and right-handed elliptically polarized light. We theoretically demonstrate that the maximum dichroism |Δ_{ED}|=1 always appears in two-photon ionization of any atom if the photon energy is tuned in so that the electron emission is dominantly determined by two intermediate resonances. We propose the two-photon ionization of atomic helium in order to demonstrate this remarkable phenomenon. The maximum elliptical dichroism could be used as a sensitive tool for analyzing the polarization state of photon beams produced by free-electron lasers.

References in corpus (6)

• Magic-zero wavelengths of alkali-metal atoms and their applications
• Coherent control of optical activity and optical anisotropy of thin metamaterials
• Emitter-site selective photoelectron circular dichroism of trifluoromethyloxirane
• Photoelectron Angular Distributions for Two-photon Ionization of Helium by Ultrashort Extreme Ultraviolet Free Electron Laser Pulses
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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Atomic, molecular and optical physics applications of longitudinally coherent and narrow bandwidth Free-Electron Lasers
• Using circular dichroism to control energy transfer in multi-photon ionization
• Fluorescence polarization as a precise tool for understanding nonsequential many-photon ionization
• Breakdown of the electric dipole approximation at Cooper minima in direct two-photon ionisation
• Photoelectron Angular Distributions of Nonresonant Two-Photon Atomic Ionization Near Nonlinear Cooper Minima
• Enhanced polarization transfer to the characteristic $L\alpha$ x-ray lines near the nonlinear Cooper minimum of two-photon ionization
• Magnetic Dichroism in Few-Photon Ionization of Polarized Atoms