Few-cycle attosecond pulse chirp effects on asymmetries in ionized electron momentum distributions

Abstract

The momentum distributions of electrons ionized from H atoms by chirped few-cycle attosecond pulses are investigated by numerically solving the time-dependent Schroedinger equation. The central carrier frequency of the pulse is chosen to be 25 eV, which is well above the ionization threshold. The asymmetry (or difference) in the yield of electrons ionized along and opposite to the direction of linear laser polarization is found to be very sensitive to the pulse chirp (for pulses with fixed carrier-envelope phase), both for a fixed electron energy and for the energy-integrated yield. In particular, the larger the pulse chirp, the larger the number of times the asymmetry changes sign as a function of ionized electron energy. For a fixed chirp, the ionized electron asymmetry is found to be sensitive also to the carrier-envelope phase of the few-cycle pulse.