Direct test of laser tunneling with electron momentum imaging. Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Tunneling is often used to describe multiphoton ionization of rare gas atoms in infrared fields. We test the tunneling approximation and its nonadiabatic extension by measuring the unperturbed momentum distribution along the direction of a circularly polarized light pulse. We find substantial, but not total, agreement between our results and the predictions of the model. As predicted, the direction momentum distribution is Gaussian and its width increases with the square root of electric field strength. However, the width is 15% too large and we find no evidence of nonadiabatic effects as we approach the expected limits of the approximation.

published proceedings

  • Phys Rev Lett

altmetric score

  • 5.08

author list (cited authors)

  • Arissian, L., Smeenk, C., Turner, F., Trallero, C., Sokolov, A. V., Villeneuve, D. M., Staudte, A., & Corkum, P. B.

citation count

  • 121

complete list of authors

  • Arissian, L||Smeenk, C||Turner, F||Trallero, C||Sokolov, AV||Villeneuve, DM||Staudte, A||Corkum, PB

publication date

  • September 2010