A Schrödinger equation for relativistic laser-matter interactions

Abstract

A semi-relativistic formulation of light-matter interaction is derived using the so called propagation gauge and the relativistic mass shift. We show that relativistic effects induced by a super-intense laser field can, to a surprisingly large extent, be accounted for by the Schr{ö}dinger equation, provided that we replace the rest mass in the propagation gauge Hamiltonian by the corresponding time-dependent field-dressed mass. The validity of the semi-relativistic approach is tested numerically on a hydrogen atom exposed to an intense XUV laser pulse strong enough to accelerate the electron towards relativistic velocities. It is found that while the results obtained from the ordinary (non-relativistic) Schr{ö}dinger equation generally differ from those of the Dirac equation, merely demonstrating that relativistic effects are significant, the semi-relativistic formulation provides results in quantitative agreement with a fully relativistic treatment.

References in corpus (6)

• Extremely high-intensity laser interactions with fundamental quantum systems
• Atoms and Molecules in Intense Laser Fields: Gauge Invariance of Theory and Models
• Relativistic ionization dynamics for a hydrogen atom exposed to super-intense XUV laser pulses
• Solution of the time-dependent Dirac equation for describing multiphoton ionization of highly-charged hydrogenlike ions
• Ionization of the hydrogen atom by intense ultrashort laser pulses
• Alternative gauge for the description of the light-matter interaction in a relativistic framework

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Simulation of nonlinear Compton scattering from bound electrons
• Relativistic mask method for electron momentum distributions after ionization of hydrogen-like ions in strong laser fields
• Ionization Induced by the Ponderomotive Force in Intense and High-Frequency Laser Fields