Trajectory-Based Coulomb-Corrected Strong Field Approximation

Abstract

The strong field approximation (SFA) is one of the most successful theo- retical approaches to tackle the problem of atomic or molecular ionization in intense laser fields. In the semi-classical limit, the SFA possesses an appealing interpreta- tion in terms of interfering quantum trajectories, which mathematically originate from the saddle point approximation to the SFA transition matrix element. The tra- jectories not only allow to interpret particular features in photoelectron spectra in an intuitive way in terms of possible electron pathways typical for a quantum mechan- ical “multi-slit experiment” but also serve as a starting point for adopting Coulomb corrections.