Two-center interference effect in ionization of diatomic molecules subject to close-to-circularly-polarized femtosecond laser fields
Abstract
Experimentally and theoretically, we explore the photoelectron momentum distributions of N2 and O2 and their companion atoms Ar and Xe, which possess nearly equal electron binding energies to the corresponding molecules, subject to close-to-circularly polarized laser fields. Compared to Xe, significant deviations of the results for O2 have been observed experimentally. In the meantime, the measured photoelectron momentum distributions of N2 match those of Ar. With the theoretical analysis based on strong field approximation, the results that N2 behaves just like its companion atom Ar and O2 behaves significantly different from Xe have been attributed to the two-center interference effect of diatomic molecules, which is disparate for N2 and O2 due to the parity difference of their molecular ground-state wave functions.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review A
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevA.98.063418
- Bibcode:
- 2018PhRvA..98f3418W