Strong-Field Double Ionization in a Three-Electron Atom: Momentum Distribution Analysis

TL;DR

This paper investigates strong-field double ionization in a three-electron atom using a simplified model, revealing how spin symmetry influences momentum distributions and correlating findings with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a reduced-dimensionality model that links spin-induced symmetry to ionization momentum distributions, providing quantum insights into classical ionization mechanisms.

Findings

Momentum distributions vary with field amplitude.

Spin symmetry affects electron momentum correlations.

Results align with experimental observations.

Abstract

We study strong-field double ionization in a three-electron atom by applying a simplified, reduced-dimensionality model with three active electrons. The influence of the spin-induced symmetry of the spatial part of the wavefunction on the final two-photoectron momentum distribution is discussed. We identify partial momentum distributions originating from different sets of spins of outgoing electrons providing in this way a quantum support connection between V-structure and direct ionization typically explained classically. Changes in the momentum distribution with increasing field amplitude obtained in our simplified model are shown to be well-correlated with experimental data known from the literature. The possible relation between the observed dependencies and different ionization mechanisms is discussed.