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Updated: Jun 5, 2026

Photoelectron Imaging of Anions Illustrated by 310 Nm Detachment of F−
Published on: July 27, 2018
Low-energy structures in strong field ionization revealed by quantum orbits
Tian-Min Yan1, S V Popruzhenko, M J J Vrakking
1Institut für Physik, Universität Rostock, 18051 Rostock, Germany.
Abstract:
Experiments on atoms in intense laser pulses and the corresponding exact ab initio solutions of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation (TDSE) yield photoelectron spectra with low-energy features that are not reproduced by the otherwise successful work horse of strong field laser physics: the "strong field approximation" (SFA). In the semiclassical limit, the SFA possesses an appealing interpretation in terms of interfering quantum trajectories. It is shown that a conceptually simple extension towards the inclusion of Coulomb effects yields very good agreement with exact TDSE results. Moreover, the Coulomb quantum orbits allow for a physically intuitive interpretation and detailed analysis of all low-energy features in the semiclassical regime, in particular, the recently discovered "low-energy structure" [C. I. Blaga, Nature Phys. 5, 335 (2009) and W. Quan, Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 093001 (2009).
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