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Journal of Physics Conference Series

Photoionization microscopy: linear polarization rotation effects

Panagiotis Kalaitzis, Sotirios Danakas, F. Lépine, Christian Bordas, S. Cohen

Published Jan 1, 2020• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Synopsis Photoionization microscopy (PM) aims at imaging the flux of slow (meV) electrons released by atomic photoionization in the presence of a static electric field. We discuss the rotation of the linear light polari-zation with respect to the electric field direction. Two-photon ionization out of an m=0 initial state allows for the population of |m|=0,1,2 Stark states. The resulting |m|-beating effects in the PM images are demonstrated theoretically (in hydrogen atom) and experimentally (in Mg atom). Implications on the applicability of tomographic techniques for slow electrons are also discussed.

DOI
10.1088/1742-6596/1412/15/152095

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Journal of Physics Conference Series•Jan 1, 2020•0 citations
Synopsis Photoionization microscopy (PM) aims at imaging the flux of slow (meV) electrons released by atomic photoionization in the presence of a static electric field. We discuss the rotation of the linear light polari-zation with respect to the electric field direction. Two-photon ionization out of an m=0 initial state allows for the population of |m|=0,1,2 Stark states. The resulting |m|-beating effects in the PM images are demonstrated theoretically (in hydrogen atom) and experimentally (in Mg atom). Implications on the applicability of tomographic techniques for slow electrons are also discussed.
Photoionization of an atom in the presence of a uniform static electric field provides the unique opportunity to expand and visualize the atomic wave function at a macroscopic scale. In a number of seminal publications dating back to the 1980s, Fabrikant, Demkov, Kondratovich, and Ostrovsky showed that this goal could be achieved by projecting slow (meV) photoionized electrons onto a position-sensitive detector and underlined the distinction between continuum and resonant contributions. The uncovering of resonant signatures was achieved fairly recently in experiments on the nonhydrogenic lithium atoms [Cohen et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 183001 (2013)]. The purpose of the present article is the general description of these findings, with emphasis on the various manifestations of resonant character. From this point of view, lithium has been chosen as an illustrative example between the two limiting cases of hydrogen, where resonance effects are more easily identified, and heavy atoms like xenon, where resonant effects were not observed.
Synopsis Photoionization microscopy (PM) is employed for imaging the flux of slow (meV) electrons ejected via atomic photoionization in the presence of a static electric field. Just above the ionization limit continuum and quasi-disrete states are degenerate. In hydrogen atom resonant excitation dominates over the continuum one, while the reverse holds for more complex atoms. We demonstrate theoretically that by using a bichromatic ω/2ω laser field and by applying phase sensitive coherent control techniques it is possible to unbury and isolate other-wise obscured resonant features in PM images.
Atomic photoionization provides an experimental situation where the outer electron is ejected to large distance without confinement condition. The application of an electric field during photoionization allows confining the electron flux along one coordinate. Therefore, photoionization in an electric field provides a unique opportunity where quantum properties of the wavefunction are projected into the macroscopic world, permitting a direct view of the square modulus of the electronic wavefunction. We present here the experimental observations of this effect, denominated photoionization microscopy. The analysis is carried out in the framework of the semiclassical model that allows a qualitative interpretation of the experimental results in terms of interferences among various classical trajectories.
We report experimental results on the photoionization spectra of excited sodium atoms in a well-defined ml=1{m}_{l}=1ml​=1 substate in the presence of a dc electric field. The various spectra corresponding to a definite polarization of the ionizing light exhibit characteristic features. It appears in addition that they are strikingly perturbed by the Earth's magnetic field.
Synopsis Photoionization is a fundamental process in which an electron is emitted from an atom. The emission is traditionally considered to be symmetric with respect to the polarization axis, unless it is temporally confined to a period shorter than an optical cycle time. We demonstrate that this symmetry can still be broken by combining a train of a few attosecond pulses and a dressing laser field. The light fields act as temporal slits and phase modulator that releases electron wavepackets. The resulting photoelectron spectra differ for electrons emitted in opposite direction along the polarization.