Probing the tunnelling site of electrons in strong field enhanced ionization of molecules

Abstract

Molecules show a much increased multiple ionization rate in a strong laser field as compared with atoms of similar ionization energy. A widely accepted model attributes this to the action of the joint fields of the adjacent ionic core and the laser on its neighbour inside the same molecule. The underlying physical picture for the enhanced ionization is that it is the up-field atom that gets ionized. However, this is still debated and remains unproven. Here we report an experimental verification of this long-standing prediction. This is accomplished by probing the two-site double ionization of ArXe, where the instantaneous field direction at the moment of electron release and the emission direction of the correlated ionizing centre are measured by detecting the recoil sum-and relative-momenta of the fragment ions. Our results unambiguously prove the intuitive picture of the enhanced multielectron dissociative ionization of molecules and clarify a long-standing controversy. © 2012 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.