Magnetic-Field Effect as a Tool to Investigate Electron Correlation in Strong-Field Ionization

The influence of the magnetic component of the driving electromagnetic field is often neglected when investigating light-matter interaction. We show that the magnetic component of the light field plays an important role in nonsequential double ionization, which serves as a powerful tool to investigate electron correlation. We investigate the magnetic-field effects in double ionization of xenon atoms driven by near-infrared ultrashort femtosecond laser pulses and find that the mean forward shift of the electron momentum distribution in light-propagation direction agrees well with the classical prediction, where no under-barrier or recollisional nondipole enhancement is observed. By extending classical trajectory Monte Carlo simulations beyond the dipole approximation, we reveal that double ionization proceeds via recollision-induced doubly excited states, followed by subsequent sequential over-barrier field ionization of the two electrons. In agreement with this model, the binding energies do not lead to an additional nondipole forward shift of the electrons. Our findings provide a new method to study electron correlation by exploiting the effect of the magnetic component of the electromagnetic field.