Probing the tunnelling site of electrons in strong field enhanced ionization of molecules

J. Wu, M. Meckel, L.Ph.H. Schmidt, M. Kunitski, S. Voss, H. Sann, H. Kim, T. Jahnke, A. Czasch and R. Dörner ()
Additional contact information
J. Wu: Institut für Kernphysik, Goethe-Universität, Max-von-Laue-Strasse 1, D-60438 Frankfurt, Germany.
M. Meckel: Institut für Kernphysik, Goethe-Universität, Max-von-Laue-Strasse 1, D-60438 Frankfurt, Germany.
L.Ph.H. Schmidt: Institut für Kernphysik, Goethe-Universität, Max-von-Laue-Strasse 1, D-60438 Frankfurt, Germany.
M. Kunitski: Institut für Kernphysik, Goethe-Universität, Max-von-Laue-Strasse 1, D-60438 Frankfurt, Germany.
S. Voss: Institut für Kernphysik, Goethe-Universität, Max-von-Laue-Strasse 1, D-60438 Frankfurt, Germany.
H. Sann: Institut für Kernphysik, Goethe-Universität, Max-von-Laue-Strasse 1, D-60438 Frankfurt, Germany.
H. Kim: Institut für Kernphysik, Goethe-Universität, Max-von-Laue-Strasse 1, D-60438 Frankfurt, Germany.
T. Jahnke: Institut für Kernphysik, Goethe-Universität, Max-von-Laue-Strasse 1, D-60438 Frankfurt, Germany.
A. Czasch: Institut für Kernphysik, Goethe-Universität, Max-von-Laue-Strasse 1, D-60438 Frankfurt, Germany.
R. Dörner: Institut für Kernphysik, Goethe-Universität, Max-von-Laue-Strasse 1, D-60438 Frankfurt, Germany.

Nature Communications, 2012, vol. 3, issue 1, 1-5

Abstract: Abstract Molecules show a much increased multiple ionization rate in a strong laser field as compared with atoms of similar ionization energy. A widely accepted model attributes this to the action of the joint fields of the adjacent ionic core and the laser on its neighbour inside the same molecule. The underlying physical picture for the enhanced ionization is that it is the up-field atom that gets ionized. However, this is still debated and remains unproven. Here we report an experimental verification of this long-standing prediction. This is accomplished by probing the two-site double ionization of ArXe, where the instantaneous field direction at the moment of electron release and the emission direction of the correlated ionizing centre are measured by detecting the recoil sum- and relative-momenta of the fragment ions. Our results unambiguously prove the intuitive picture of the enhanced multielectron dissociative ionization of molecules and clarify a long-standing controversy.

Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2130 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:3:y:2012:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms2130

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2130

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().