Taking snapshots of a moving electron wave packet in molecules using photoelectron holography in strong-field tunneling ionization*

Abstract

Coherent superposition of electronic states induces attosecond electron motion in molecules. We theoretically investigate the strong-field ionization of this superposition state by numerically solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. In the obtained photoelectron momentum distribution, an intriguing bifurcation structure appears in the strong-field holographic interference pattern. We demonstrate that this bifurcation structure directly provides complete information about the status of the transient wave function of the superposition state: the horizontal location of the bifurcation in the momentum distribution reveals the relative phase of the involved components of the superposition state and the vertical position indicates the relative coefficient. Thus, this bifurcation structure takes a snapshot of the transient electron wave packet of the superposition state and provides an intuitive way to monitor electron motion in molecules.

Time-dependent variational approach to solve multi-dimensional time-dependent Schrödinger equation

“…The nearly horizontal fork-like interference fringes are the strong-field photoelectron holography. [30] In previous studies, both the inherent structural information and the ultrafast electronic dynamical information can be retrieved from the phase of the interference fringes, [5,31,32] which requires our approximation method to provide correct interference fringe locations as carried out with the traditional TDSE solving method (including the split-operator spectral method). To make an intuitive comparison, we cut slices from Figs.…”

Using analytically-corrected semiclassical rescattering model to study Coulomb impact in spiderlike photoelectron momentum distributions

“…Consequently, structural and dynamic information can be retrieved from these patterns [7,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. The spiderlike PMDs have been extensively investigated both experimentally and numerically [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] since Hickstein's reported the pioneering work on the interference feature [23].…”