Modeling tomographic measurements of photoelectron vortices in counter-rotating circularly polarized laser pulses

TL;DR

This paper models the complex photoelectron momentum distributions resulting from three-photon ionization of potassium by counter-rotating circularly polarized laser pulses, demonstrating the accuracy of advanced theoretical techniques.

Contribution

It applies the R-matrix with time dependence method to accurately simulate multidimensional photoelectron distributions in a complex ionization process.

Findings

Calculated distributions match experimental measurements.

Revealed detailed interference patterns in photoelectron vortices.

Validated the R-matrix approach for multidimensional photoionization modeling.

Abstract

Recent experiments [D. Pengel, S. Kerbstadt, L. Englert, T. Bayer, and M. Wollenhaupt, \href{https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.96.043426}{{\PRA} {\bf 96} 043426 (2017)}] have measured the photoelectron momentum distribution for three-photon ionization of potassium by counter-rotating circularly polarized 790-nm laser pulses. The distribution displays spiral vortices, arising from the interference of ionizing wavepackets with different magnetic quantum numbers. The high level of multidimensional detail observed in the distribution makes this an ideal case in which to demonstrate the accuracy of emerging theoretical techniques applicable to such problems. We use the \(R\)-matrix with time dependence approach to investigate this process. We calculate the full-dimensional photoelectron momentum distribution, and compare against a set of planar projections of this distribution previously measured in experiment.