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Physical Review Letters

Complete Characterizations of Intermediate and Final State Wave Functions with Photoionization of Polarized Rb

Huanyu Ma, Linxuan Zhang, Xincheng Wang, Zhihan Zou, Rujin Lv, Zhenjie Shen, Ahai Chen, Matthias Weidemüller, Kiyoshi Ueda, Difa Ye, Yuhai Jiang

Published Mar 27, 2025• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The amplitude and phase of a photoionization channel provide deep insights into the nature of ionization dynamics. Here, we propose a novel experimental approach to retrieve these parameters from the photoelectron momentum distribution (PMD), where a 400 nm femtosecond laser is used to ionize polarized Rb atoms prepared in the 5p state. The magnetic quantum numbers of polarized atoms are well controlled by breaking down the symmetry of the cooling laser in a magneto-optical trap reaction microscope. From the tilt angle of the PMD and the interference structure of εs and εd ionization channels, we are able to extract their relative amplitude and phase shift, in good agreement with ab initio calculations. This exhibits a benchmark one-photon single ionization study of the hydrogen-like atom, providing a complete measurement with full characterizations of intermediate and final state wave functions.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.134.123204

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The amplitude and phase of a photoionization channel provide deep insights into the nature of ionization dynamics. Here, we propose a novel experimental approach to retrieve these parameters from the photoelectron momentum distribution (PMD), where a 400 nm femtosecond laser is used to ionize polarized Rb atoms prepared in the 5p state. The magnetic quantum numbers of polarized atoms are well controlled by breaking down the symmetry of the cooling laser in a magneto-optical trap reaction microscope. From the tilt angle of the PMD and the interference structure of εs and εd ionization channels, we are able to extract their relative amplitude and phase shift, in good agreement with ab initio calculations. This exhibits a benchmark one-photon single ionization study of the hydrogen-like atom, providing a complete measurement with full characterizations of intermediate and final state wave functions.
Photoionization induced by trapping and auxiliary laser fields is an inherent feature of many laser-cooling and optical trapping experiments, yet its microscopic dynamics are rarely investigated directly. In this work, we employ a reaction microscope implementing an event-by-event photoionization time retrieval technique to extend momentum-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy to continuous-wave laser--atom interactions. We investigate low-intensity multicolor photoionization of laser-cooled lithium atoms confined in an all-optical trap. Complete three-dimensional electron momentum distributions and kinetic-energy spectra recorded for different laser wavelengths and polarization configurations identify resonant excitation of the 5p5p5p and 5f5f5f states and reveal an additional ionization channel following spontaneous decay from the 5f5f5f to the 4d4d4d state. A pronounced polarization dependence of the photoionization yield is explained by magnetic-sublevel selection rules and the coherent interference of different virtual excitation pathways. These results demonstrate that reaction microscopy combined with event-by-event time reconstruction provides a powerful approach for investigating microscopic electronic dynamics in laser-cooled atomic systems and offers new insight into photoionization processes occurring during optical trapping.
We report in detail our complete characterization of atomic photoionization via a single measurement, namely, that of the two-photon photoelectron angular distribution using elliptically polarized light. Through these measurements we are able to determine the atomic parameters necessary to unambiguously describe two-photon ionization of atomic rubidium. These parameters include relative cross sections for photoionization into various outgoing channels as well as the phase difference between the continuum S and D partial waves. We present a derivation of the angular distribution with arbitrarily polarized light in terms of these cross sections and phases, demonstrate the advantages of using elliptically polarized light, discuss details of the experiment, and report the results of our measurements in this paper. While measured phase differences are in excellent agreement with expected values over the entire range of photoelectron kinetic energy of our measurements from 0 to 0.5 eV, ratios of cross sections for photoionization into the two D channels are anomalous, suggesting unexpected fine structure effects in these continua.
We report in detail our complete characterization of atomic photoionization via a single measurement, namely, that of the two-photon photoelectron angular distribution using elliptically polarized light. Through these measurements we are able to determine the atomic parameters necessary to unambiguously describe two-photon ionization of atomic rubidium. These parameters include relative cross sections for photoionization into various outgoing channels as well as the phase difference between the continuum S and D partial waves. We present a derivation of the angular distribution with arbitrarily polarized light in terms of these cross sections and phases, demonstrate the advantages of using elliptically polarized light, discuss details of the experiment, and report the results of our measurements in this paper. While measured phase differences are in excellent agreement with expected values over the entire range of photoelectron kinetic energy of our measurements from 0 to 0.5 eV, ratios of cross sections for photoionization into the two D channels are anomalous, suggesting unexpected fine structure effects in these continua.
We present our study on complete measurements of two-photon ionization in atomic rubidium. In this study we developed an effective technique to measure the angular distributions of photoelectrons. Through the measurements with this technique and using elliptically-polarized light we have successfully determined the atomic parameters—the relative cross sections for various ionization channels as well as the phase difference between s- and d-continuum waves. The measured phase differences are in excellent agreement with expected values over the entire range of photoelectron kinetic energy from 0 to 0.5 eV. The measured relative cross sections for ionization into S and D channels are also in good agreement with theoretical data. Both the relative cross sections and phase differences show a slow variation as a function of photoelectron energy. The ratios of cross sections of the two D channels are not in agreement with the expected value, suggesting fine structure effects. We also studied a quantum mechanical interference using two-color laser fields and observed the extremely asymmetric photoelectron angular distribution produced by interfering even- and odd-order photoionization processes in atomic rubidium as the optical phase was varied. We observed these effects with both perpendicularly and parallel-polarized fields components. It is worthy to note that the quantum interference observed with perpendicularly-polarized two-color fields is unique. Based on the analysis of measured angular distributions we derived the phase difference between even and odd continuum waves for the first time. The measured value of the phase difference is in good agreement with the calculated value from quantum defect theory.
We present a complete experimental determination of the atomic parameters necessary to unambiguously characterize two-photon ionization of atomic rubidium, i.e., the relative photoionization cross sections and the continuum wave function phase difference. We obtain these complete results through a single measurement, that of the two-photon photoelectron angular distribution using elliptically polarized light. While measured phase differences are in excellent agreement with expected values, the ratios of photoionization cross sections of the two D channels are not.