Abstract
Tunneling-ionization imaging of photoexcitation of NO has been demonstrated by using few-cycle near-infrared intense laser pulses (8 fs, 800 nm, ). The ion image of fragment ions produced by dissociative ionization of NO in the ground state, NO , exhibits a characteristic momentum distribution peaked at 45° with respect to the laser polarization direction. On the other hand, a broad distribution centered at appears when the () excited state is prepared as the initial state by deep-UV photoexcitation. The observed angular distributions are in good agreement with the corresponding theoretical tunneling ionization yields, showing that the fragment anisotropy reflects changes of the highest-occupied molecular orbital by photoexcitation.
- Received 13 November 2015
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.163002
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