Attosecond Electron Wave Packet Dynamics in Strong Laser Fields

Journal Article · Fri Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 2005 · Physical Review Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.013001· OSTI ID:20696424

Johnsson, P; Remetter, T; Varju, K; L'Huillier, A ^[1]; Lopez-Martens, R; Valentin, C; Balcou, Ph ^[2]; Kazamias, S ^[3]; Mauritsson, J; Gaarde, M B; Schafer, K J ^[4]; Mairesse, Y; Wabnitz, H; Salieres, P ^[5]

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1. Department of Physics, Lund Institute of Technology, P.O. Box 118, SE-221 00 Lund (Sweden)
2. Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquee, Ecole Nationale Superieure des Techniques Avancees (ENSTA) - Ecole Polytechnique CNRS UMR 7639, 91761 Palaiseau Cedex (France)
3. Laboratoire d'Interaction du rayonnement X Avec la Matiere, Universite Paris-Sud, 91405 Orsay (France)
4. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803-4001 (United States)
5. CEA/DSM/DRECAM/SPAM, Ba circumflex t. 522, Centre d'Etudes de Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette (France)

We use a train of sub-200 attosecond extreme ultraviolet (XUV) pulses with energies just above the ionization threshold in argon to create a train of temporally localized electron wave packets. We study the energy transfer from a strong infrared (IR) laser field to the ionized electrons as a function of the delay between the XUV and IR fields. When the wave packets are born at the zero crossings of the IR field, a significant amount of energy ({approx}20 eV) is transferred from the field to the electrons. This results in dramatically enhanced above-threshold ionization in conditions where the IR field alone does not induce any significant ionization. Because both the energy and duration of the wave packets can be varied independently of the IR laser, they are valuable tools for studying and controlling strong-field processes.

• OSTI ID: 20696424
• Journal Information: Physical Review Letters, Journal Name: Physical Review Letters Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 95; ISSN 0031-9007; ISSN PRLTAO
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
ARGON
ELECTRONS
ENERGY TRANSFER
EV RANGE 10-100
EXTREME ULTRAVIOLET RADIATION
LASER RADIATION
LASERS
PHOTOIONIZATION
PHOTON-ATOM COLLISIONS
PULSES
WAVE PACKETS