Photoelectron combs in ionization: Influence of rescattering and nondipole effects

Abstract

Ionization by a sequence of extreme ultraviolet pulses is investigated based on the rigorous numerical solution of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation, when the driving laser field is treated exactly. This goes beyond the typically used first-order nondipole approximation and reveals the effects of radiation pressure to its full extent. Specifically, we observe the comb structures in both the momentum and the energy distributions of photoelectrons. The comb peaks are shifted, however, depending on the emission angle of electrons. While similar effect is observed already in the first-order nondipole approximation, with increasing the laser field strength the discrepancy with our exact results becomes more pronounced. Also, we observe the additional substructure of the comb peaks arising in the angle-integrated energy distributions of photoelectrons. Finally, as our numerical calculations account for the atomic potential in the entire interaction region, we observe the loss of coherence of comb structures with increasing the number of laser pulses, that we attribute to rescattering.