Enhancement and control of H2 dissociative ionization by femtosecond VUV laser pulses

Phys Rev Lett. 2006 Apr 14;96(14):143001. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.143001. Epub 2006 Apr 10.

Abstract

We report ab initio calculations of H2 ionization by VUV/fs 10(12) W/cm2 laser pulses including correlation and all electronic and vibrational degrees of freedom (DOF). Inclusion of the nuclear DOF leads to a substantial increase of resonance enhanced multiphoton ionization. By varying pulse duration, it is possible to control the ratio of dissociative to nondissociative ionization as well as the final H+(2) vibrational distribution. For pulses longer than 10 fs and proportional to omega>0.46 a.u., dissociative ionization entirely dominates, which is a very unusual situation in photoionization studies.