Climbing the N-shell resonance ladder of xenon

TL;DR

This study investigates how the ionization of xenon by ultrafast XUV pulses varies with excitation energy, revealing resonance effects linked to the xenon N-shell and sequential multi-photon absorption processes.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the resonance structures affecting multi-photon ionization of xenon near the N-shell using experimental and simulated spectra.

Findings

Ion yields vary strongly with excitation energy.

Resonance structures in the N-shell influence ionization.

Sequential multi-photon absorption dominates near resonances.

Abstract

The dependency on the excitation energy of ultrafast multi-photon ionization of xenon by intense, short extreme ultraviolet pulses (XUV) was investigated in the vicinity of the 4$d$ 'giant' resonance using ion time-of-flight spectroscopy. The yields of the high charge states of xenon show strong variations with the excitation energy. With reference to simulated absorption spectra, we can link the photon energy dependency to resonance structures of single-electron excitations mainly in the xenon N-shell and purely sequential multi-photon absorption.