Study of molecules and clusters in intense laser fields using the quantum trajectory-based Coulomb-corrected strong-field approximation

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Dieter Bauer
• Subject Area: Optics, Quantum Optics and Physics of Atoms, Molecules and Plasmas
• Term: from 2013 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 241260867

The interaction of atoms or molecules with intense laser pulses requires a theoretical description beyond conventional perturbation theory. In the widely applied strong field approximation (SFA) the laser field is neglected up to the ionization time while the Coulomb interaction between electron and ion is neglected after the ionization. However, it turned out that many of the experimentally observed or via the exact solution of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation found properties of photoelectron spectra are due to Coulomb effects, and thus are not accessible to the SFA. We have developed a Coulomb correction to the SFA which relies on so-called quantum orbits. In this way, any feature of photoelectron spectra may be interpreted in terms of interfering quantum trajectories - which amounts to maximum insight into quantum dynamics. In the proposed project, we want to extend the method and apply it to more complex systems such as molecules and clusters.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants