Extracting the phase distribution of the electron wave packet ionized by an elliptically polarized laser pulse

Abstract

We use an interferometic scheme to extract the phase distribution of the electron wave packet from above-threshold ionization in elliptically polarized laser fields. In this scheme, an electron wave packet released from a circularly polarized laser pulse acts as a reference wave and interferes with the electron wave packet ionized by a time-delayed counter-rotating elliptically polarized laser field. The generated vortex-shaped interference pattern in the photoelectron momentum distribution enables us to extract the phase distribution of the electron wave packet in the elliptically polarized laser pulse with high precision. By artificially screening the ionic potential at different ranges when solving the time-dependent Schördinger equation, we find that the angle-dependent phase distribution of the electron wave packet in the elliptically polarized laser field shows an obvious angular shift as compared to the strong-field approximation, whose value is the same as the attoclock shift. We also show that the amplitude of the angle-dependent phase distribution is sensitive to the ellipticity of the laser pulse, providing an alternative way to precisely calibrate the laser ellipticity in the attoclock measurement.

Keywords

above-threshold ionization / photoelectron interference / vortex structure

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