Phase-dependent ionization in the barrier suppression regime

Here the dependence of atomic ionization on the absolute phase of sub-10-fs pulses in the barrier suppression regime is investigated. The results obtained show that it is possible to find a parameter range for the laser pulse where the phase dependence of the ionization after the pulse is a nonoscillating curve with a well defined minimum (or maximum). This effect is explained by a simple model based on the assumption that in this regime the ionization is dominated by the electrons ejected when the field exceeds the critical value for suppression of the Coulomb barrier. These findings can be used to design phase-dependent absorbers with a potential application to stabilize the absolute phase into the cavity of a femtosecond laser, which is of major importance for extreme nonlinear optics.     

Comparison study of atomic and molecular single ionization in the multiphoton ionization regime

In this Letter, we report, for the first time in the multiphoton ionization regime, a comparison study of single-electron ionization of diatomic molecules versus rare gas atoms with virtually the same ionization potentials. In comparing N2+ to Ar+, a higher ion signal is seen in N2+ compared to Ar+ for linear polarization but the difference vanishes in circularly polarized light. In comparing O2+ to Xe+, we observe a suppression in O2+ compared to Xe+ for both linear and circular polarization but this suppression exhibits an intensity dependence; i.e., there is little suppression for O2+ at the lowest intensity range, but the suppression becomes increasingly stronger as the laser intensity increases. The multielectron screening model is used to discuss possible mechanisms of this intensity dependent suppression in O2+ in the multiphoton ionization regime.     

Effects of the carrier-envelope phase in the multiphoton ionization regime

We theoretically investigate the effects of the carrier-envelope phase of few-cycle laser pulses in the multiphoton ionization regime. For atoms with low ionization potential, total ionization yield barely exhibits phase dependence, as expected. However, population of some bound states clearly shows phase dependence. This implies that the measurement of the carrier-envelope phase would be possible through the photoemission between bound states without energy-and-angle-resolved photoelectron detection. The considered scheme could be particularly useful to measure the carrier-envelope phase for a light source without an amplifier, such as a laser oscillator, which cannot provide sufficient pulse energy to induce tunneling ionization.     

Effects of the carrier-envelope phase of chirped laser pulses in the multiphoton ionization regime

By solving the time-dependent Schr?dinger equation for the Cs atom, we find that, as long as the spectral bandwidth is sufficiently broad, the asymmetry of photoelectron ejection is strongly phase dependent and persists even when the chirped pulse duration becomes more than several cycles. The asymmetry survives even after the angle integration over the hemisphere, implying that the detection efficiency can be significantly improved. This counterintuitive and robust finding provides a simple way to measure the phase for both transform-limited and chirped pulses.     

Phase-dependent fluctuations of resonance fluorescence beyond the squeezing regime

Phase-dependent quantum features of the light scattered by a two-level atom driven by a monochromatic laser were investigated theoretically using the method of conditional homodyne detection [Carmichael, Castro-Beltran, Foster, Orozco, Phys. Rev. Lett. 85 (2000) 1855]. The splitting of fluctuations into terms of second and third order correlations of the dipole noise is obtained analytically. For the out-of-phase quadrature and weak laser driving the former are known to be squeezed. The third order fluctuations, newly found in this paper, grow with the laser intensity, contaminate squeezing below saturation, and dominate above it. They are responsible for the non-classicality and non-Gaussianity of the fluorescence for moderate to strong driving. Conditional homodyne detection, in both time and frequency domains, illustrates more general phase-dependent effects than squeezing, and is much less restricted by finite collection and quantum detector efficiencies than standard homodyne detection schemes.     

Polarization effects in resonance-enhanced frequency tripling and multiphoton ionization in xenon under excitation by crossed laser beams

Generation of resonance-enhanced third harmonic and multiphoton ionization in xenon have been studied for different polarizations of crossed laser beams. Polarization control over the harmonic generation and resonant ionization processes in crossed beams is analyzed and discussed.     

Isotope-selective ionization utilizing molecular alignment and non-resonant multiphoton ionization

We demonstrate laser nitrogen isotope separation, which is based on field-free alignment and angular-dependent ionization of ¹⁴N₂ and ¹⁵N₂ isotopologues. A linearly polarized short laser pulse (???~?795?nm, ?????~?60?fs) creates rotational wave packets in the isotopologues, which periodically revive with different revival times as a result of different moments of inertia. Another linearly polarized short laser pulse (???~?795?nm, ?????~?60?fs) ionizes one of the isotopologues selectively as a result of their different angular distributions. In the present experiments, the ion yield ratio R [=I(¹⁵N₂ ⁺)/I(¹⁴N₂ ⁺)] can be changed in the range from 0.85 to 1.22, depending on the time delay between the two laser pulses.     

Thermalization in multiphoton excitation of molecules

The thermalization of coherent multiphoton excitation of molecules is examined. An inspection of the level distribution of a driven anharmonic oscillator, which is subject to energy and phase dissipation to a bath, reveals that phase relaxation (dephasing) due to the bath perturbation plays a major role in the thermalization process.     

Electron and multiphoton ionization of xenon

A method for determining photoionization cross sections based on comparison of the characteristics of electron- and photon-impact processes is described, discussed, and demonstrated to have many advantageous features.     

Localized and dispersive states in the multiphoton ionization processes

We introduce the notion of localized and dispersive states in the problem of multiphoton ionization of atoms by a laser beam. The connection is made with the ionization probability.     

Resonant multiphoton ionization of Li

We present calculations of three photon ionization of Li produced by 3-ps laser pulses within a single electron local model potential using the dressed state picture. The laser frequency ranges from 15 000 to 18 400 cm⁻¹. We have found that the measured ionization signal as a function of photon frequency results from ionization processes in a region where the laser intensity is not homogeneous. We assume a Gaussian shape for the light pulse in the interaction volume. Our results are shown to be in good agreement with experiment. We propose that free electrons are submitted to a ponderomotif potential to interpret experimental results. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Saturation and rabi oscillations in resonant multiphoton ionization

We present an analysis of saturation in resonant two-photon ionization which includes bound and continuum energy shifts, induced widths and bound-bound nutational Rabi frequencies at extreme saturation.     

Allowed electric-quadrupole resonances and the electric-dipole approximation in multiphoton ionization

The transition probability for the two photon ionization of atomic cesium has been calculated considering the electric-dipole plus quadrupole approximation. A significant quadrupole contribution is theoretically predicted in the region where an allowed electric-quadrupole resonance is present.     

Infrared multiphoton excitation of polyatomic molecules

Results of investigations of the process of multiphoton excitation of polyatomic molecules by CO₂-laser radiation are presented. The mechanism of formation of the profiles of IR absorption bands of polyatomic molecules is discussed. New experimental methods of investigation of relaxation processes at high levels of vibrational excitation of molecules in the ground and triplet states are considered. For vapors of polyatomic molecules and their mixtures with foreign gases, the quantitative characteristics of the collisional exchange and the vibrational-energy transfer as well as the rates of intercombinational conversion ⇛ and triplet-triplet transfer are presented and their dependences on the vibrational-excitation level are discussed. Institute of Molecular and Atomic Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, 70, F. Skorina Ave., Minsk, 220072, Belarus. Translated from Zhurnal Prikladnoi Spektroskopii, Vol. 65, No. 5, pp. 675–693, September–October, 1998.     

Partitioning of the linear photon momentum in multiphoton ionization

The balance of the linear photon momentum in multiphoton ionization is studied experimentally. In the experiment argon and neon atoms are singly ionized by circularly polarized laser pulses with a wavelength of 800 and 1400 nm in the intensity range of 10(14)-10(15) W/cm2. The photoelectrons are measured using velocity map imaging. We find that the photoelectrons carry linear momentum corresponding to the photons absorbed above the field free ionization threshold. Our finding has implications for concurrent models of the generation of terahertz radiation in filaments.