Multiphoton ionization and multiphoton resonances in the tunneling regime.

Abstract

The rate of ionization of an atom of helium, argon, or hydrogen exposed to an intense monochromatic laser field and the quasienergy spectrum of their dressed states are studied for values of the Keldysh parameter between 1 and 0.6 and wavelengths between 390 and 1300 nm. The calculations are carried out within the non-Hermitian Floquet theory. Resonances with intermediate excited states significantly affect ionization from the dressed ground state at all the intensities and all the wavelengths considered. The dressed excited states responsible for these structures are large-α0 states akin to the Kramers-Henneberger states of the high-frequency Floquet theory. Within the single-active-electron approximation, these large-α0 states become species independent at sufficiently high intensity or sufficiently long wavelength. Apart for the resonance structures arising from multiphoton coupling with excited states, the ab initio Floquet ionization rate is in excellent agreement with the predictions of two different calculations in the strong field approximation, one based on a length-gauge formulation of this approximation and one based on a velocity-gauge formulation. The calculations also confirm the validity of the ω2 expansion as an alternative to the strong field approximation for taking into account the nonadiabaticity of the ionization process in intense low-frequency laser fields.