Photoionization of helium by attosecond pulses: extraction of spectra from correlated wave functions

TL;DR

This paper compares three methods for extracting photoelectron spectra from helium subjected to attosecond pulses, providing insights into autoionizing resonances, double ionization, and spectral features with high temporal resolution.

Contribution

It introduces and compares three techniques for accurately extracting photoelectron spectra from correlated wavefunctions in helium under attosecond pulses, enhancing spectral analysis precision.

Findings

Comparison of three extraction techniques for spectra

Insights into autoionizing resonances and double ionization

Enhanced understanding of spectral features in helium

Abstract

We investigate the photoionization spectrum of helium by attosecond XUV pulses both in the spectral region of doubly excited resonances as well as above the double ionization threshold. In order to probe for convergence, we compare three techniques to extract photoelectron spectra from the wavepacket resulting from the integration of the time-dependent Schroedinger equation in a finite-element discrete variable representation basis. These techniques are: projection on products of hydrogenic bound and continuum states, projection onto multi-channel scattering states computed in a B-spline close-coupling basis, and a technique based on exterior complex scaling (ECS) implemented in the same basis used for the time propagation. These methods allow to monitor the population of continuum states in wavepackets created with ultrashort pulses in different regimes. Applications include photo cross sections and anisotropy parameters in the spectral region of doubly excited resonances, time-resolved photoexcitation of autoionizing resonances in an attosecond pump-probe setting, and the energy and angular distribution of correlated wavepackets for two-photon double ionization.