Theory of Multi-Photon Ionization of Atoms and Molecules

In this paper we present a density matrix formalism to treat one-photon ionization and multiphoton ionization of atoms and molecules in the presence of an external field. It is shown that Fano's results for one-photon ionization without an external field can easily be obtained from our formulation. For comparison, the Green's function method applied to multiphoton ionization of molecules is also presented.