Atomic Hydrogen in Intense, High-Frequency Laser Fields

Abstract

Under the impact of impressive advances in the development of superintense lasers, yielding many atomic units of intensity at frequencies in the VUV and beyond1, attention has been focused on atomic behavior in this new kind of environment. Because of the high intensities at hand, the traditional theoretical approach, based on lowest order perturbation theory formulas, ceases to be valid. However, a high-frequency nonperturbative theory was recently developed by Gavrila and Kaminski2,3, capable of dealing with atomic interactions under these circumstances. So far only one-electron atom systems have been considered. The theory was first applied to electron-potential scattering4,6. It was then extended to atomic structure and multiphoton ionization in the intense, high-frequency regime3,7,8. In the following we shall review the formalism for the bound state problem and discuss some of its recent applications.