Dynamic exchange in the strong field ionization of molecules

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that dynamic exchange significantly influences strong field molecular ionization, affecting yield angular dependence and aligning with experimental observations, across different computational levels.

Contribution

It reveals the dominant role of dynamic exchange in molecular ionization and its impact on alignment dependence, validated by both Hartree-Fock and ab initio calculations.

Findings

Dynamic exchange fixes ionization yield peaks at specific angles.

It alters alignment dependence of yields by up to a factor of 2.

The effect is consistent across computational methods.

Abstract

We show that dynamic exchange is a dominant effect in strong field ionization of molecules. In $CO_2$ it fixes the peak ionization yield at the experimentally observed angle of $45^\circ$ between polarization direction and the molecular axis. In $N_2$ it changes the alignment dependence of yields by up to a factor of 2. The effect appears on the Hartree-Fock level as well as in full {\it ab initio} solutions of the Schr\"odinger equation.