Physical Review A
Interfering one-photon and two-photon ionization by femtosecond VUV pulses in the region of an intermediate resonance
Alexei N. Grum-Grzhimailo, Грызлова Елена Владимировна, Ekaterina I. Staroselskaya, Joel Venzke, Klaus Bartschat
Abstract
The electron angular distribution after atomic photoionization by the fundamental frequency and its second harmonic is analyzed for a case when the frequency of the fundamental scans the region of an intermediate atomic state. The angular distribution and its left-right asymmetry, due to the two-pathway interference between nonresonant one-photon and resonant two-photon ionization, sharply change as a function of the photon energy. The phenomenon is exemplified by both solving the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation on a numerical space-time grid and by applying perturbation theory for ionization of the hydrogen atom in the region of the $1s\text{\ensuremath{-}}2p$ transition for femtosecond pulses as well as an infinitely long exposure to the radiation. Parametrizations for the asymmetry and the anisotropy coefficients, obtained within perturbation theory, reveal general characteristics of observable quantities as functions of the parameters of the radiation beam.