Momentum transfers in correlation-assisted tunneling

Abstract

We consider correlation-assisted tunnel ionization of a small molecule by an intense low-frequency laser pulse. In this mechanism, the departing electron excites the state of the ion via a Coulomb interaction. We show that the wave packets emerging from this process can have nontrivial spatial structure and give a measurable indicator of correlated multielectron dynamics during the tunneling step. We also show that the saddle-point approximation requires special attention in this geometric analysis.