Above-threshold ionization of diatomic molecules in an intense laser field: Molecular alignment effects

ZiLong Hu, XuanYang Lai, XiaoJun Liu, and Jing Chen
Phys. Rev. A 89, 043401 – Published 2 April 2014

Abstract

In this work, we study the photoelectron spectra of the diatomic molecule O2 in the direction perpendicular to the laser polarization. Compared with atoms, molecules have additional parameters, e.g., the orientation of the molecule and the symmetry of the initial electronic state, and thus give rise to richer strong-field phenomena. Our simulations show that for parallel and perpendicular alignments of the laser polarization with respect to the molecular axis, the photoelectron spectra display above-threshold ionization (ATI) peaks with a specific 2ω separation in which the absorption of an even number of photons is absent. However, for other alignment angles, the even-order ATI peaks appear. According to our analysis, the physical mechanism of the alignment effect of the even-order ATI peaks can be attributed to the symmetry of the molecular ground-state wave function with respect to the photoelectron emission direction.

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  • Received 27 January 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.89.043401

©2014 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

ZiLong Hu1,2, XuanYang Lai1, XiaoJun Liu1,*, and Jing Chen3,4,†

  • 1State Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance and Atomic and Molecular Physics, Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071, China
  • 2University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080, China
  • 3HEDPS, Center for Applied Physics and Technology, Peking University, 100084, Beijing, China
  • 4Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics, P. O. Box 100088, Beijing, China

  • *xjliu@wipm.ac.cn
  • chen_jing@iapcm.ac.cn

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Issue

Vol. 89, Iss. 4 — April 2014

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