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It is shown that the puzzling experimental observation of suppressed molecular ionization, in intense laser fields, of O2, and its absence in N2, is a symmetry induced dynamical effect. More generally, it is predicted that the ionization signal of the class of homonuclear diatomic molecules having valence orbitals with an antibonding symmetry (e.g., sigma(u), pi(g)) would be suppressed, but not those with a bonding symmetry (e.g., sigma(g), pi(u)). The suppression effect can be visualized as due to an effective destructive interference between the two subwaves of the ionizing electron emerging from the two atomic centers.

Theory of multiphoton processes.(Physics of atoms and molecules) Includes bibliographical references and index. I. Multiphoton processes. I. Title. II. Series.

Intense-field many-body S-matrix theory (IMST) provides a systematic ab initio approach to investigate the dynamics of atoms and molecules interacting with intense laser radiation. We review the derivation of IMST as well as its diagrammatic representation and point out its advantage over the conventional 'prior' and 'post' expansions which are shown to be special cases of IMST. The practicality and usefulness of the theory is illustrated by its application to a number of current problems of atomic and molecular ionization in intense fields. We also present a consistent S-matrix formulation of the quantum amplitude for high harmonic generation (HHG) and point out some of the most general properties of HHG radiation emitted by a single atom as well as its relation to coherent emission from many atoms. Experimental results for single and double (multiple) ionization of atoms and the observed distributions of coincidence measurements are analysed and the dominant mechanisms behind them are discussed. Ionization of more complex systems such as diatomic and polyatomic molecules in intense laser fields is analysed as well using IMST and the results are discussed with special attention to the role of molecular orbital symmetry and molecular orientation in space. The review ends with a summary and a brief outlook.

We show that the recently reported momentum distribution of recoil ions from laser induced nonsequential double ionization can be interpreted as a combined effect of interelectron correlation and final state field interaction ("Volkov dressing") of the two outgoing electrons. We also find a cutoff formula for the recoil momentum that gives the maximum momenta observed in the experiments.

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In a series of recent experiments anomalously large probabilities of laser-induced double ionization of the He atom have been observed. In this letter we analyse the clearest observation of this phenomenon, over a signal range of many orders of magnitude, by Walker et al. The analysis is carried out using a newly developed intense-field many-body S-matrix theory. For the first time good agreement between the experimental data and a theory is found. It is shown that the dominant mechanism behind the observed large probability of laser-induced double escape is a quantum mechanical process of absorption of photon energy by one of the electrons which is shared cooperatively with the other electron through the Coulomb correlation; quantitatively it turns out to be one of the largest effects of electron - electron correlation known in atomic physics.

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