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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-EQEC)

The role of the Kramers-Henneberger atom in the higher-order Kerr effect

S. Patchkovskii, Maria Richter, Felipe Morales, Olga V. Smirnova, Misha Ivanov

Published May 1, 2013• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present a generalized model for the intensity dependent response of atoms in strong IR laser fields, describing deviations in the nonlinear response at the frequency of the driving field from the standard model (linear Kerr effect + plasma defocusing) based on the formation of the stable KH states. According to our numerical simulations, shaping the driving laser pulse allows one to reveal a prominent resonance structure in the Kerr response of an individual atom, which can only be explained by population transfer into excited KH states.

DOI
10.1109/cleoe-iqec.2013.6801163

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We present a generalized model for the intensity dependent response of atoms in strong IR laser fields, describing deviations in the nonlinear response at the frequency of the driving field from the standard model (linear Kerr effect + plasma defocusing) based on the formation of the stable KH states. According to our numerical simulations, shaping the driving laser pulse allows one to reveal a prominent resonance structure in the Kerr response of an individual atom, which can only be explained by population transfer into excited KH states.
We discuss the connection between strong-field ionization, saturation of the Kerr response and the formation of the Kramers–Henneberger (KH) atom and long-living excitations in intense infrared (IR) external fields. We present a generalized model for the intensity-dependent response of atoms in strong IR laser fields, describing deviations in the nonlinear response at the frequency of the driving field from the standard model. We show that shaping the driving laser pulse allows one to reveal signatures of the excited KH states in the Kerr response of an individual atom.
Accurate modeling of optical nonlinearities is crucial to describe macroscopic laser propagation in a medium, including sum frequency generation, spectral broadening due to self-phase modulation, various ionization processes and soliton formation. For incident laser light the response of the medium is given by the induced polarization of the microscopic system. The polarization is usually expanded in a Taylor series for the electric field amplitude, which is truncated after the first non-linear term being of third order for isotropic media. A third-order nonlinearity leads to the well-known optical Kerr effect, where the refractive index of the medium becomes intensity dependent via n = n0+ n2I. This leads to an inherent problem when modeling laser propagation in two or more spatial dimensions, linked to the formal divergence (n2> 0) of the refractive index for increasing intensity.
The Electric Stark effect of a Kramers-Henneberger (KH) state of hydrogen atoms in both linearly and circularly polarized laser fields is studied. For the ground KH state of H atoms with a small quiver amplitude, the quadratic Stark effect is observed. For a large quiver amplitude, the Stark effect is quadratic only in a weak electric field and quickly changes to linear as the electric field increases. The atomic structure of the KH state is very sensitive to the electric field and can be easily polarized. The huge polarizability and induced dipole moment are comparable to those of Rydberg atoms.
We have investigated the nonlinear susceptibility of atoms induced by high intensity, ultrashort laser pulses using a numerical solution of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. We found that the instantaneous nonlinear susceptibility becomes saturated at high intensity. We also found that the saturation is closely linked to depletion of the ground state. Based on the numerical results, a simple model that generalizes the nonlinear susceptibility of atoms for high intensity, ultrashort laser pulses is proposed. We also investigated the ionization-induced dipole moment and found that the amplitude of the dipole moment induced by an ionized electron is, in general, smaller than that induced by a free-electron, and is attributable to a residual interaction between the ionized-electron and its parent ion.