Type

Text

Type

Dissertation

Advisor

Louis F. DiMauro, Adjunct Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy and Professor, The Ohio State University, Department of Physics | Edward Shuryak, Distinguished Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy | Thomas C. Weinacht. Associate Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy | Trevor J. Sears, Professor, Department of Chemistry and Senior Chemist, Brookhaven National Laboratory

Date

2009-12-01

Keywords

Ionization | Photoelectron wave packet | Electromagnetic fields | Wave packets

Department

Department of Physics

Language

en_US

Source

This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.

Identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/11401/71550

Publisher

The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.

Format

application/pdf

Abstract

When atoms and molecules are subjected to low frequency laser fields whose electric fields rival the atomic and molecular ones, the liberated photoelectrons can revisit and subsequently rescatter on their parent ions within a fraction of the laser period. In the last few years, using nearinfrared pulses it has been shown that the photoelectron momentum distribution carries the fingerprint of a diffraction pattern from which for molecules it is possible to extract structural information. Given that the maximum kinetic energy of the returning photoelectron wave packet increases with the intensity and the square of the wavelength of the driving field, intense mid-infrared laser pulses should be used instead, since they create wave packets that can have an associated de Broglie wavelength smaller than the ionic size. Coupled with the sub-cycle dynamics of the electron wave packet, this diffraction-based mechanism can form the basis of a molecular camera, capable of “viewing” chemical reactions. As a first step in the development of such a camera, we recorded high resolution momentum distributions for atoms and molecules extracting diffraction patterns for both near-infrared and mid-infrared driving laser iii fields. In addition, a low energy structure present in the photoelectron spectra not predicted by analytical models has been investigated.

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