Above-threshold ionization of helium in the long-wavelength regime: Examining the single-active-electron approximation and the two-electron strong-field approximation

Abstract

We investigate high-order above-threshold ionization of model helium in the long-wavelength regime up to 2400 nm by solving the two-electron time-dependent Schrödinger equation in one dimension. To bypass the difficulty of solving the multielectron time-dependent Schrödinger equation with the long-wavelength laser interaction, we revisit and examine two typically used theoretical methods: the single-active-electron approximation and the strong-field approximation. For the description of the high-energy rescattered electrons in the ground-state ionic channel, the single-active-electron approximation performs better with increasing ponderomotive energy. Single ionization in the excited-state ionic channels, in general, has much weaker spectral intensity than that in the ground-state ionic channel. The above-threshold-ionization cutoffs in the excited-state ionic channels are clear signatures of two-electron dynamics, which cannot be explained within the single-active-electron approximation. By applying the two-electron strong-field approximation including rescattering and a saddle-point method analysis, we explain the channel-resolved cutoffs, and relate them to elastic and inelastic rescattering processes.