Photoionization of chiral molecules by counter-rotating bicircular laser fields: a chiral attoclock

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how chiral molecules in counter-rotating bicircular laser fields can be used to probe ionization dynamics with high sensitivity, revealing the ionic potential's influence through chiro-sensitive electron interference patterns.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method utilizing molecular chirality and bicircular laser fields to enhance the detection of ionization dynamics and ionic potential effects.

Findings

Chiral molecules induce asymmetries in electron ejection angles.

Quantum interferences are highly sensitive to molecular chirality.

The method encodes ionization dynamics onto measurable electron angles.

Abstract

Measuring and controlling the ionization dynamics by intense laser fields has recently led to important breakthroughs, from the investigation of tunneling time delays to attosecond molecular imaging by electron holography. In these experiments, extracting the subtle influence of the ionic potential on the departing electrons is of capital importance, and often challenging. Here we show that molecular chirality naturally provides a solution to this issue by breaking the symmetry of the photoionization process along the laser propagation direction. Using counter-rotating bicircular bichromatic laser fields, we produce two families of electrons with distinct ionization dynamics. Their overlap in momentum space results in quantum interferences, which are extremely sensitive to molecular chirality. The angular streaking of the electrons by the rotating laser field acts as an attoclock, encoding the ionization dynamics onto the electron ejection angle. Chirosensitive forward/backward asymmetries reveal the short and long spatial range influence of the ionic potential in the ionization process.