Attosecond Laser Pulse Ionization of Atoms and Molecules

Teck Ghee Lee 1, M. S. Pindzola and F. Robicheaux

Department of Physics, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, USA
Synopsis Ionization dynamics of atoms and molecules under attosecond laser pulses with various photon energies and peak intensities have been investigated using the Time-Dependent Close-Coupling (TDCC) method. We predict the chirp eects on the triply dierential probabilities for the ionized electrons of He produced by 450 and 135 asec pulses. In addition, we shall apply our generalized TDCC method to examine the four-body breakup dynamics of molecular hydrogen induced by these ultrashort pulses.

Due to signicant technological developments of strong and short laser pulses, ionization of atoms and molecules by intense laser elds has received considerable attention in the past few years, both experimentally and theoretically. Experimentally, the developments of techniques in ultrafast science have allowed the production of laser pulses with reproducible temporal evolution of the electric eld by using phase-stabilized optical frequency combs methods. Intense and ultrashort x-ray pulses with durations of the order of a few hundred attoseconds (asec), produced by means of the high-order harmonic generation (HHG) technique and that may attain intensities > 1014 W/cm2 is within the horizon (see review[1]). Theoretically, various state-of-the-art approaches based on numerical solutions of the time-dependent Schrdinger equation (TDSE) o have been developed and improved over the years in order to study the response of the ejected electrons to temporal laser pulses. The TDCC method [2] is one such theory with a primary goal of exploring electron-electron correlation in fewbody breakup, particularly, the sequential and nonsequential ionization mechanism in the twophoton double ionization of He over a wide range of photon energies. In this work, we applied the TDCC method to predict and analyze how the ejected-electron distribution varies as a function of chirp parameters in ultrashort laser pulses. It is found that the ejected electrons probability density for twophoton double ionization is very sensitive to the chirp. Fig. 1 shows that the chirp causes the electron energy distribution to broaden and stretch along the ejected-electron equal energy sharing direction. This results in the total probability for two-photon double ionization to increase relative to the zero chirp case. Their corresponding energy and angular dierential probabilities are
1

also analyzed in order to better understand the chirp eects on correlated electron emission. In addition, we shall apply our generalized TDCC method to examine the dynamics of electron correlation for the four-body breakup process of a hydrogen molecule induced by circularly polarized attosecond pulses. This work was supported in part by grants from NSF and DOE. Computational work was carried out at NERSC in Oakland, CA.
100 80 60 40 20

(a) 450 asec

Second electron energy (eV)

0 100 80 60 40 20 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1

(b) 450 asec, = 0.04

0 100 80 60 40 20

(c) 135 asec

0 0 20 40 60 80 100

First electron energy (eV)

Fig. 1 Contour plots of probability density distribution (in arbitrary units) of the energy E1 , E2 of the two electrons for a pulse with FWHM of (a) 450 asec, (b) 450 asec with chirp = 0.04 and (c) 135 asec. Note that the scales are relative.

References
[1] F. Krauz and M. Ivanov, Re. Mod. Phys. 81, 163 (2009). [2] M. S. Pindzola et al., J. Phys. B 40, R39 (2007).

E-mail: teck@physics.auburn.edu