Interference of nuclear wave packets carrying different angular momenta in the dissociation of H2+ in strong circularly polarized laser pulses

Abstract

We systematically investigate the interference of nuclear wave packets carrying different angular momenta by numerically solving the time-dependent Schr\odinger equation for the dissociation of ${{\mathrm{H}}_{2}}^{+}$ in strong circularly polarized laser pulses. ${{\mathrm{H}}_{2}}^{+}$ exposed to strong laser pulses may absorb different numbers of photons and dissociate along different pathways carrying different angular momenta. In case dissociation pathways differ by an even number of photons, the respective wave packets have the same parity and thus interfere with each other, leading to spiral nuclear momentum distributions for the dissociative fragments. Inversely, by investigating the interference structure of the angle-resolved kinetic energy release of the dissociative fragments, the molecular dissociation pathways can be extracted. The spiral nuclear momentum distribution provides another approach to explore ultrafast molecular dynamics.