# Interference effects in above-threshold ionization from diatomic molecules: determining the internuclear separation

## TL;DR

This paper investigates how interference patterns in above-threshold ionization spectra of diatomic molecules depend on internuclear distance and orientation, enabling the determination of molecular structure from spectral features.

## Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of interference effects in ionization spectra, highlighting conditions where internuclear distance can be accurately inferred from spectral minima.

## Key findings

- Interference maxima and minima are affected by electron rescattering processes.
- Clear interference patterns emerge near the classical rescattering boundary.
- Internuclear distance can be deduced from energy differences of spectral minima.

## Abstract

We calculate angle-resolved above-threshold ionization spectra for diatomic molecules in linearly polarized laser fields, employing the strong-field approximation. The interference structure resulting from the individual contributions of the different scattering scenarios is discussed in detail, with respect to the dependence on the internuclear distance and molecular orientation. We show that, in general, the contributions from the processes in which the electron is freed at one center and rescatters off the other obscure the interference maxima and minima obtained from single-center processes. However, around the boundary of the energy regions for which rescattering has a classical counterpart, such processes play a negligible role and very clear interference patterns are observed. In such energy regions, one is able to infer the internuclear distance from the energy difference between adjacent interference minima.