Floquet analysis of wavefunctions of atoms interacting with a short, strong laser pulse

Abstract

A method is developed to analyse the wavefunctions of one-electron atoms interacting with a short and strong laser pulse. It is shown that the occupation probability density of the degenerate subspaces to the same quasienergy of the instantaneous Floquet functions can be determined even if the system contains a continuum. The method is demonstrated by two calculations, one involving bound states only and one using a one-dimensional model which exhibits the full continuum structure.