Calculations of population transfer during intense laser pulses.

摘要

Recent experiments by several groups have examined the question of population transfer to resonantly excited states during intense short laser pulses, in particular the amount of population that remains ''trapped'' in excited states at the end of a laser pulse. In this chapter we present calculations of population transfer and resonant ionization in xenon at both 660 and 620 nm. At the longer wavelength, the seven photon channel closes at 2.5(times)10(sup 13) W/cm(sup 2). Pulses with peak intensities higher than this result in ''Rydberg trapping'', the resonant transfer of population to a broad range of high-lying states. The amount of population transferred depends on both the peak intensity and pulse duration. At 620 mm there are numerous possible six photon resonances to states with p or f angular momentum. We have done a large number of calculations for 40 fs pulses at different peak intensities and have examined the population transferred to these low-lying resonant states as a function of the peak laser intensity. We do not have room to comment upon the resonantly enhanced ionized electron energy spectra that we also determine in the same calculations. Our calculations involve the direct numerical integration of the time-dependent Schroedinger equation for an atom interacting with a strong laser field. The time-dependent wave function of a given valence electron is calculated on a spatial grid using a one-electron pseudo potential. This single active electron approximation (SAE) has been shown to be a good approximation for the rare gases at the intensities and wavelengths that we will consider. The SAE potential we use has an explicit angular momentum dependence which allows us to reproduce all of the excited state energies for xenon quite well.