Electron dynamics of molecular double ionization by elliptically polarized few-cycle laser pulses

Abstract

Using the classical ensemble method, we have investigated double ionization (DI) of diatomic molecules driven by elliptically polarized few-cycle laser pulses. The results show that DI channel depends strongly on internuclear distances (R), which is dominated by nonsequential double ionization (NSDI) for small and large R, while sequential double ionization (SDI) for mediate R. By tracing NSDI trajectories, we find that NSDI mainly originates from recollision process for small R and collision process for large R. Moreover, the correlated momentum distributions along the long axis strongly depend on the carrier-envelope-phase (CEP), and this phase dependence is affected by R.