A general model and toolkit for the ionization of three or more electrons in strongly driven atoms using an effective Coulomb potential for the interaction between bound electrons

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive semi-classical model for simulating triple and double ionization in three-electron atoms under intense laser fields, incorporating effective Coulomb potentials to prevent autoionization and comparing results with experimental data.

Contribution

It presents a novel general framework for multi-electron ionization modeling using effective Coulomb potentials, applicable to atoms with more than three electrons.

Findings

The model accurately reproduces ionization spectra and electron momentum correlations.

Effective Coulomb potentials prevent unphysical autoionization in classical simulations.

Results align well with experimental measurements of electron momentum distributions.

Abstract

We formulate a three-dimensional semi-classical model to address triple and double ionization in three-electron atoms driven by intense infrared laser pulses. During time propagation, our model fully accounts for the Coulomb singularities, the magnetic field of the laser pulse and for the motion of the nucleus at the same time as for the motion of the three electrons. The framework we develop is general and can account for multi-electron ionization in strongly-driven atoms with more than three electrons. To avoid unphysical autoionization arising in classical models of three or more electrons, we replace the Coulomb potential between pairs of bound electrons with effective Coulomb potentials. The Coulomb forces between electrons that are not both bound are fully accounted for. We develop a set of criteria to determine when electrons become bound during time propagation. We compare ionization spectra obtained with the model developed here and with the Heisenberg model that includes a potential term restricting an electron from closely approaching the core. Such spectra include the sum of the electron momenta along the direction of the laser field as well as the correlated electron momenta. We also compare these results with experimental ones.