Enhancing frustrated double ionization with no electronic correlation in triatomic molecules using counter-rotating two-color circular laser fields

Abstract

We demonstrate significant enhancement of frustrated double ionization (FDI) in the two-electron triatomic molecule D$_{3}^{+}$ when driven by counter-rotating two-color circular (CRTC) laser fields. We employ a three-dimensional semiclassical model that fully accounts for electron and nuclear motion in strong fields. For different pairs of wavelengths, we compute the probabilities of the FDI pathways as a function of the ratio of the two field-strengths. We identify a pathway of frustrated double ionization that is not present in strongly-driven molecules with linear fields. In this pathway the first ionization step is "frustrated" and electronic correlation is essentially absent. This pathway is responsible for enhancing frustrated double ionization with CRTC fields. We also employ a simple model that predicts many of the main features of the probabilities of the FDI pathways as a function of the ratio of the two field-strengths.