Atomic and Free Electrons in a Strong Light Field

Nikolai B. Delone, В. П. Крайнов

Mikhail Vladimirovich Fedorov

This book presents and describes a series of unusual and striking strong-field phenomena concerning atoms and free electrons. Some of these phenomena are: multiphoton stimulated bremsstrahlung, free-electron lasers, wave-packet physics, above-threshold ionization, and strong-field stabilization in Rydberg atoms. The theoretical foundations and causes of the phenomena are described in detail, with all the approximations and derivations discussed. All the known and relevant experiments are described too, and their results are compared with those of the existing theoretical models.An extensive ge

Eduardo Arqué López, Valerio Di Giulio, F. Javier Garcı́a de Abajo

We theoretically investigate the ability of free electrons to yield information on the nonlinear Floquet dynamics of atomic systems subject to intense external illumination. By applying a quantum-mechanical formalism to describe the atom-electron interaction under the presence of a monochromatic classical light field, we observe multiple energy features that reveal a large departure from nonillumination conditions in two- and three-level illuminated atoms, including the emergence of energy features associated with direct photon absorption and emission by the electron, as well as a varied set of Floquet resonances that strongly depend on the light intensity and frequency. Our results unveil a wealth of effects associated with the interaction between free electrons and optically driven electronic systems.

S. Swain

Christian Ott, Lennart Aufleger, Thomas Ding +21 more

We report on the experimental observation of a strong-field dressing of an autoionizing two-electron state in helium with intense extreme-ultraviolet laser pulses from a free-electron laser. The asymmetric Fano line shape of this transition is spectrally resolved, and we observe modifications of the resonance asymmetry structure for increasing free-electron-laser pulse energy on the order of few tens of Microjoules. A quantum-mechanical calculation of the time-dependent dipole response of this autoionizing state, driven by classical extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) electric fields, evidences strong-field-induced energy and phase shifts of the doubly excited state, which are extracted from the Fano line-shape asymmetry. The experimental results obtained at the Free-Electron Laser in Hamburg (FLASH) thus correspond to transient energy shifts on the order of a few meV, induced by strong XUV fields. These results open up a new way of performing nonperturbative XUV nonlinear optics for the light-matter interaction of resonant electronic transitions in atoms at short wavelengths.