Carrier-envelope phase mapping in laser-induced electron diffraction

Abstract

We present laser-induced electron diffraction measurements of elastic differential scattering cross sections (DCSs) of a photoelectron on the parent ion for argon, krypton, and xenon, using waveform-controlled few-cycle pulses. Considering only cutoff electrons and employing the adiabatic theory for the analysis enables us to eliminate ambiguities in extracting the DCSs from experimental spectra. Contrary to previous works, which mainly focused on the angular dependence of the DCS, our method allows us to extract also its dependence on the scattering momentum. In the case of xenon, we demonstrate how this method can be used to obtain the complete angular and momentum dependence of the DCS in a range of these variables determined by the pulse. The obtained results are compared to theoretical calculations based on the single-active-electron approximation, which shows a high level of agreement. Further investigations may provide opportunities to study multielectron effects when more advanced theoretical models become available.