Real-time probing electron dynamics of an atom in a strong infrared laser field

TL;DR

This paper presents theoretical methods to monitor real-time electron density changes in an atom subjected to a strong IR laser field using ultrafast NIR and XUV pulses, revealing insights into tunneling and excitation dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel probing scheme employing delayed NIR and XUV pulses to investigate electron density evolution during strong-field interactions.

Findings

NIR pulses reflect electron density near the tunneling barrier.

XUV pulses probe electron density near the nucleus.

Probing schemes can study polarization and excitation dynamics.

Abstract

We present theoretical studies on real-time probing the electron density evolution of an atom in a strong infrared (IR) laser field with few-cycle near-infrared (NIR) and attosecond extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) pulses. Our results indicate that the electron density near the tunneling barrier is reflected in the additional tunneling ionization yield with a delayed NIR pulse and the electron density near the nucleus can be probed by the single photoionization yield with a delayed XUV pulse. It turns out the NIR-probing scheme can be used to study the polarization of the system in an external IR field and the XUV-probing can be additionally applied to explore excitation dynamics during and after the IR field interaction.