Model of nuclear excitation by electronic motion in intense laser fields.

Abstract

A simple model of coupled electronic and collective nuclear motion is used to study energy-transfer processes in the presence of intense short-wavelength laser fields. The complete Hamiltonian of the model includes distinct nuclear, electronic, and laser-field terms. A semiclassical method of extracting spectral information from the generated trajectories of the Hamiltonian is used to calculate laser-electronic-nuclear energy-transfer rates. The nuclear term describes a deformed heavy nucleus; it sufficiently treats the collective nuclear motion, which is lower in frequency than that which would be given by an individual-particle nucleon model. We specifically report on the dynamics of this model, and on the energy transfers that ensue, in the presence of an x-ray laser field, as a function of the electron radial distance. This general problem is of basic interest in the studies of laser-driven nuclear excitation.