Attosecond coherent control of oxygen dissociation by XUV-IR laser fields using three-dimensional momentum imaging

P. Ranitovic, F. P. Sturm, X. M. Tong, T. W. Wright, D. Ray, I. Zalyubovskya, N. Shivaram, A. Belkacem, D. S. Slaughter, and Th. Weber

Phys. Rev. A 98, 013410 – Published 16 July 2018

Abstract

We have performed ultrafast three-dimensional ion momentum imaging spectroscopy on the dissociative single ionization of oxygen molecules using attosecond pulse trains with a broad energy spectrum of 5–30 eV. High-resolution momentum imaging allows clear identification of vibrational structures corresponding to the predissociation of highly excited cationic states. By adding a pump infrared field that is synchronized with and polarized orthogonally to the XUV pulse train, and an additional probe IR field, we demonstrate how the yield of $O^{+}$ ions can be steered between different dissociation channels by coherently controlling the coupling between multiple $O_{2}^{+ *}$ electronic states on an attosecond time scale. Time-dependent calculations in a single active electron approximation allow a qualitative analysis of ion yields for two orientations of the molecular axis.

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Received 10 April 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.98.013410

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Coherent control Ultrafast phenomena

Atomic, Molecular & Optical

Authors & Affiliations

P. Ranitovic^*

Chemical Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA and Laboratorium für Physikalische Chemie, ETH Zürich, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland

F. P. Sturm

Institut für Kernphysik, Universität Frankfurt, Max-von-Laue Strasse 1, D-60438 Frankfurt, Germany and Chemical Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA

X. M. Tong