A versatile semiclassical approximation for intense laser-atom processes is presented.
This uniform approximation is no more complicated than the frequently-used multi-dimensional saddle-point approximation and far superior, since it applies for all energies, both close to as well as away from classical cutoffs. In the latter case, it reduces to the standard saddle-point approximation. The uniform approximation agrees accurately with numerical evaluations for potentials, for which these are feasible, and constitutes a practicable method of calculation in general. The method is applied to the calculation of high-order above-threshold ionization spectra with various binding potentials: Coulomb, Yukawa, and shell potentials which may model C$_{60}$ molecules or clusters. The shell potentials generate high-order ATI spectra that are more structured and may feature an apparently higher cutoff.
Nonlocal potential models have been used in place of the Coulomb potential in the Schrodinger equation as an efficient means of exploring high field laser-atom interaction in previous works. Al- though these models have found use in modeling phenomena including photo-ionization and ejected electron momentum spectra, they are known to break electromagnetic gauge invariance. This paper examines if there is a preferred gauge for the linear field response and photoionization characteristics of nonlocal atomic binding potentials in the length and velocity gauges. It is found that the length gauge i…
Compton scattering is one of the fundamental interaction processes of light with matter. Already upon its discovery [1] it was described as a billiard-type collision of a photon kicking a quasi-free electron. With decreasing photon energy, the maximum possible momentum transfer becomes so small that the corresponding energy falls below the binding energy of the electron. Then ionization by Compton scattering becomes an intriguing quantum phenomenon. Here we report a kinematically complete experiment on Compton scattering at helium atoms below that threshold. We determine the momentum correlati…
We analyze how bound-state excitation, electron exchange and the residual binding potential influence above-threshold ionization (ATI) in Helium prepared in an excited $p$ state, oriented parallel and perpendicular to a linearly polarized mid-IR field. Using ab initio B-spline Algebraic Diagrammatic Construction (ADC), and several one-electron methods with effective potentials, including the Schrödinger solver Qprop, modified versions of the Strong-Field Approximation and the Coulomb-Quantum Orbit Strong-Field Approximation (CQSFA), we find that these specific physical mechanisms leave signifi…
We perform ab initio calculations of the QED effects of order $mα^7$ for the $2^3S$ and $2^3P$ states of He-like ions. The computed effects are combined with previously calculated energies from [V. A. Yerokhin and K. Pachucki, Phys. Rev. A 81, 022507 (2010)], thus improving the theoretical accuracy by an order of magnitude. The obtained theoretical values for the $2^3S$-$2^3P_{0,2}$ transition energies are in good agreement with available experimental results and with previous calculations performed to all orders in the nuclear binding strength parameter $Zα$. For the ionization energies, howe…
In strong-field ionization interferences between electron trajectories create a variety of interference structures in the final momentum distributions. Among them, the interferences between electron pathways that are driven directly to the detector and the ones that rescatter significantly with the parent ion lead to holography-type interference patterns that received great attention in recent years. In this work, we study the influence of the magnetic field component onto the holographic interference pattern, an effect beyond the electric dipole approximation, in experiment and theory. The ex…
This work discusses a protocol for constructing highly accurate potential energy curves (PECs) for the lowest two states of Rb$_{2}^+$, i.e. $X\,{}^2Σ{_g^+}$ and $(1) {}^2Σ{_u^+}$, using an additivity scheme based on coupled-cluster theory. The approach exploits the findings of our previous work [J. Schnabel, L. Cheng and A. Köhn, J. Chem. Phys. 155, 124101 (2021)] to avoid the unphysical repulsive long-range barrier occurring for symmetric molecular ions when perturbative estimates of higher-order cluster operators are employed. Furthermore, care was taken to reproduce the physically correct …
