Comparison of dissociative ionization of H2, N2, Ar2, and CO by elliptically polarized two-color pulses

Abstract

We study the directional dissociative ionization of diatomic molecules (H 2 , N 2 , Ar 2 , and CO) by intense phase-controlled elliptically polarized two-color pulses. The phase between the two colors of our elliptically polarized two-color pulse is unambiguously and straightforwardly assigned by tracing the momentum of the released electron, streaked by the rotating laser field, which is imprinted in the momentum of the correlated ion. The laser-driven electron motion, electron-localization-assisted enhanced multielectron ionization, and role of the orbital shape for the asymmetric dissociative ionizations of various molecules are discussed.

Understanding the role of phase in chemical bond breaking with coincidence angular streaking

“…2c) for E k 40.6 eV. This confirms that our measured asymmetry is indeed due to interference between the 1o and net-2o dissociating wavepackets [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]32 . In our second two-state quantum mechanical model, we numerically solved the one-dimensional time-dependent Schrödinger equation for the vibrational nuclear wavepacket 33 …”

“…The data show that electron localization is not something that has to be artificially enforced by optical means [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] , but occurs naturally, even in pulses that are perfectly symmetric. Our technique, involving the coincidence detection of a streaked electron with a fragment ion, enables the phase and energy dependence of electron localization along a molecular bond to be explored in a transparent way.…”

“…Electron localization in the breakup of hydrogen molecular ions has previously been observed [20][21][22][23][24] with symmetry-broken laser fields produced by CEP stabilizing a few-cycle pulse [20][21][22] or by composing a pulse of two different carrier frequencies 23,24 . The asymmetric fields drive and eventually localize the bound electron at one of the dissociating nuclei 25 .…”

“…A vibrational nuclear wavepacket on the 1ss g þ curve is created by the early part of the laser pulse at time t i . The wavepacket is coupled forth-and-back between the 2ps u þ and 1ss g þ states at later times (t c ) when the energy gap between the potential curves matches the photon energy (or three times the photon energy), with the molecular ion eventually dissociating into H þ þ H. Because of the coherent superposition of 1ss g þ and 2ps u þ contributions [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] , the electron probability density localizes asymmetrically at the nuclei. This electron localization dynamics is governed by the laser phase at the instant of field ionization (t i ) and by the coupling times t c,3o , t c,1o and t 0 c,1o , which depend on the chosen photon energy and on the shape of the potential energy curves involved.…”

“…The kinetic energy spectrum shifts when f el mol is changed by 180°. This is indicative of a kinetic-energy-dependent asymmetric dissociation or electron localization due to the interference between the 1o-and net-2o-dissociating wavepackets [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]32 .…”