Strong-field ionization of molecules in circularly polarized few-cycle pulses

Abstract

We have numerically investigated ionization of molecules exposed to circularly polarized (CP) intense few-cycle pulses (FCPs) by solving the three-dimensional time-dependent Schroedinger equation. The resulting photoelectron spectra exhibit an interesting ''plateau'' feature that does not appear for atoms exposed to circularly-polarized laser fields. The origin comes from the intense CP field ionizing a portion of the electron wave packet about one nuclear center and driving it through the other. Moreover, the angular distribution of photoelectrons gives an indication of the carrier-envelope phase of the applied FCP, which implies that steering of photoelectrons in space can be achieved by controlling the FCP phase.