Nonadiabatic tunneling in circularly polarized laser fields. III. Comparison with experiment

TL;DR

This paper compares a theoretical model of nonadiabatic tunneling in circularly polarized laser fields with recent experimental results, confirming strong agreement and clarifying previous apparent discrepancies.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the theoretical predictions align well with experimental data and clarifies how to accurately apply the model to avoid perceived discrepancies.

Findings

Theory and experiment are in very good agreement.

Proper application of the model removes previous discrepancies.

Proposes an experiment to determine ionization preferences of valence orbitals.

Abstract

We compare results of the recent experiment by Herath et al [T. Herath, L. Yan, S. K. Lee, and W. Li, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 043004 (2012)] on strong-field nonadiabatic tunneling in circularly polarized laser fields with the original predictions of our theory [I. Barth and O. Smirnova, Phys. Rev A 84, 063415 (2011)] that stimulated these experiments. We show that the theory and experiment are in very good agreement. We also explain why the initial comparison performed by Herath et al [T. Herath, L. Yan, S. K. Lee, and W. Li, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 043004 (2012)] has suggested quantitative discrepancies with our theory. We confirm that these seeming discrepancies are removed with an accurate application of our theoretical model. We suggest an experiment for unique determination of the ionization preference of valence orbitals p+ or p-.