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Physical Review A

Multiphoton ionization of atoms: Effect of the final-state Coulomb potential on the ionization rate

Xingdong Mu

Published May 1, 1991• 9 citations
Publisher

Abstract

An approximation scheme is proposed to incorporate the influence of the Coulomb potential on the photoelectron in a nonperturbative treatment of multiphoton ionization rates. The method involves an approximation to an exact rate expression; when the latter is expanded in powers of the binding potential, the zeroth-order term is the commonly used Keldysh rate. The approach is applied to hydrogenlike atoms. Photoelectron angular distributions are calculated; these compare favorably with experimental measurements and with results of some other theoretical approaches.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.43.5149

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An approximation scheme is proposed to incorporate the influence of the Coulomb potential on the photoelectron in a nonperturbative treatment of multiphoton ionization rates. The method involves an approximation to an exact rate expression; when the latter is expanded in powers of the binding potential, the zeroth-order term is the commonly used Keldysh rate. The approach is applied to hydrogenlike atoms. Photoelectron angular distributions are calculated; these compare favorably with experimental measurements and with results of some other theoretical approaches.
The Keldysh approximation to treat the multiphoton ionization of atoms is reconsidered. It is shown that, if one consistently uses the hypothesis under which the approximation should be valid (essentially, that of a weak, short-range binding potential), a Keldysh-like term results as an approximation to the first term of a uniformly convergent series in powers of the binding potential. No cancellation occurs when higher-order terms are taken into account. This result allows one to consider the Keldysh approximation as a well-defined theoretical model, without implying, however, that it is adequate to describe multiphoton ionization of real atoms.
The general theory of multiphoton ionization of hydrogen atoms by simultaneous absorption of several photons is discussed. In the nonrelativistic dipole approximation, the calculations lead to a recursion relationship concerning angular functions and involve radial matrix elements containing many summations over intermediate states. A general method for exactly evaluating several sums is described in detail and applied to the photo-ionization of atomic hydrogen in the ground state. Numerical results are presented as dispersion curves of the transition rate $\frac{{\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{n}}{{I}^{N\ensuremath{-}1}}$ for a range of wavelengths from 1000 up to 7200 \AA{}.
The photoionization of atoms in a strong electromagnetic field leads to the effect of "above-threshold" ionization, displaying a number of peaks in the energy spectrum of the photoelectrons. In the case of a one-electron model atom in a circularly polarized field, we derive expressions that describe the position as well as the intensity of those peaks as a function of the field parameters by means of a nonperturbative method. It is immediately clear from our formulas that the lowest-energy peaks in general disappear with increasing field intensity, for Coulomb-like as well as shortrange potentials. For a zero-range potential, a numerical evaluation is easily performed, leading to results that are in every respect qualitatively similar to the experimental results obtained thus far on these kinds of processes.
Multiphoton ionization of hydrogen atoms by a strong multimode field when several final continuum states are populated is treated theoretically within a model based on the S-matrix formalism. The field is taken in dipole approximation, with zero bandwidth. Field-dressed Coulomb wave functions are used for the electron final states. Ionization rates are calculated for different numbers of photons absorbed in excess of the minimum number required to go into the continuum. In general, the calculated quantities are in good qualitative agreement with the corresponding experimental observations.
In this paper, we present the theory of photoelectron angular distributions in resonant multiphoton ionization that rigorously takes into account the saturation, ac Stark-shift, and the laser-linewidth effects. The influence of these effects on the distribution is incorporated through the coupling equations between the angle-resolved ionization probabilities and the (time-dependent) bound-state density-matrix elements. General expressions for the angular distributions are derived and several properties of these distributions are arrived at from these expressions. Finally, numerical results are presented to illustrate the effects of saturation, of ac Stark shifts, and of the laser line shape.