Physical Mechanisms of Light-Induced Molecular Fragmentation in the Long-Wavelength Regime

Abstract

Strong near-infrared (NIR) laser fields ionize polyatomic molecules through tunneling and multiphoton processes, while subsequent molecular fragmentation can be driven by electron rescattering and field-induced nonadiabatic excitation of the molecular ion. How these competing mechanisms deposit energy into molecular ions and determine fragmentation branching remains unresolved. By combining wavelength- and ellipticity-dependent intensity-difference mass spectrometry of methanol with time-dependent Schrödinger equation (TDSE) and semiclassical Monte Carlo simulations, we demonstrate that, in the tunneling-to-intermediate regime ($γ\lesssim 1$), molecular fragmentation is governed by the interplay of electron recollision and field-driven nonadiabatic excitation, revealing competing physical mechanisms relevant to polyatomic molecules more broadly. Ellipticity-dependent measurements demonstrate that these mechanisms can be experimentally distinguished for individual cationic fragments. Channels requiring high internal energies exhibit the strong ellipticity-dependent suppression characteristic of rescattering-driven processes, while lower-energy channels are comparatively less sensitive. Although small-fragment yields decrease substantially with increasing wavelength, their relative distributions remain largely unchanged, indicating that the underlying fragmentation pathways are preserved and that the suppression primarily reflects reduced probabilities of electron recollision and nonadiabatic excitations at longer wavelengths.