Carrier-envelope phase effect in the yield of sequential ionization by an intense few-cycle laser pulse

Abstract

The relative yield of highly charged atomic ions produced by a short (4-6 fs at FWHM) intense (10 14-5×10 18Wcm -2) laser pulse was investigated by numerical solution of the rate equations. We predict oscillations of the ion yield as a function of the absolute phase. A distinctive property of this phase dependence is that it can only be observed when at least two ions have comparable yields. It is shown that with currently available laser systems the effect should be experimentally detectable for various rare gas atoms: Xe, Kr, Ar and Ne. © IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.