Laser streaking of dissociating D2+ in a strong midinfrared laser pulse

Abstract

Laser streaking of photoelectrons has been a well-established technique to extract ultrafast information. In analogy to the streaking of photoelectrons, in this paper, we study the laser streaking of nuclei by numerically simulating the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equations of ${\mathrm{D}}_{2}^{+}$ in strong laser fields. We first demonstrate the nuclear streaking, where the dissociating wave packet excited by an isolated attosecond pulse and propagating on molecular potential surfaces is streaked by a strong midinfrared laser pulse. Subsequently, we use an attosecond pulse train composing two successive attosecond pulses to initiate the dissociation of ${\mathrm{D}}_{2}^{+}$. Depending on the time delay between the attosecond pulse train and the midinfrared laser pulse, the streaked nuclear wave packets show a novel delay-dependent interference pattern. By tracing the wave-packet evolution in the adiabatic presentation, the complicated dissociation pathways are revealed. Based on the streaked nuclear pattern, one may conceive a strategy to probe the real-time nuclear streaking process and extract instantaneous dynamics information experimentally.