Double-slit interference effect in electron emission fromH2+exposed to x-ray radiation

Abstract

We consider the photoionization of the hydrogen molecular ion exposed to x-ray radiation for photon energies up to 500 eV in the fixed-nuclei approximation. The temporal development of the system is described by a fully ab initio time-dependent grid-based approach in prolate spheroidal coordinates. At sufficently high photon energies, the angular distributions of the electron ejected from the two-center diatomic target resemble the classical double-slit-like interference pattern more closely when the molecular axis and the linear laser polarization direction are perpendicular to each other than in the parallel geometry. Both the preferable emission modes and the confinement effect (in the parallel geometry) of the photoelectron also map out in the time evolution of the wave packets. The validity of a simple plane-wave model is analyzed by comparing its predictions with those from our accurate ab initio calculations.