Abstract
In photoionization microscopy experiments, an atom is placed in static external fields, it is ionized by a laser, and an electron falls onto a position-sensitive detector. The current of electrons arriving at various points on the detector depends upon the initial state of the atom, the excited states to which the electron is resonantly or nonresonantly excited, and the various paths leading from the atom to the final point on the detector. We report here quantum-mechanical computations of photoionization microscopy in parallel electric and magnetic fields. We focus especially on the patterns resulting from resonant excited states. We show that the magnetic field substantially modifies some of these resonant states, confining them in the radial direction, and that it has a strong effect on the interference pattern at the detector.
Highlights
Recent developments in the field of photoelectron imaging have allowed the direct observation of the oscillatory structure of a microscopic wave-function on a macroscopic scale [1,2,3,4]
Six other red resonances are given for their interesting interaction features with the magnetic field, which we will use as an example in later discussions
Since the diamagnetic interaction is proportional to ρ2, the energies of these red states are more sensitive to magnetic fields than those of the corresponding blue states
Summary
Recent developments in the field of photoelectron imaging have allowed the direct observation of the oscillatory structure of a microscopic wave-function on a macroscopic scale [1,2,3,4]. A quantum theory for photoelectron microscopy in both hydrogen and lithium atoms was developed by Zhao et al [15, 16] They found that Stark resonances dramatically change the electron spatial distribution. The spectrum of hydrogen atom in parallel fields has been studied by many researchers at the energy far below the Stark saddle point [22,23,24]. As already mentioned, it is known that for hydrogen in a pure electric field, resonances have a large effect [16], greatly changing the outgoing waves in narrow ranges of energy. In this paper we calculate by quantum theory the patterns that may be seen in photoionization microscopy experiments on hydrogen in parallel electric and magnetic fields, giving particular attention to the effects of resonances. There are two parts to our calculations. (1) We find the energies of resonances in parallel fields using the complex-rotation technique (CRT) [25]. (2) Using a wavepacket propagation method, we compute the wave function extending to large distances, and show how the patterns on the detector change when a parallel magnetic field is applied
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