Signatures of the continuum electron phase in molecular strong-field photoelectron holography

Laser-driven electron recollision is at the heart of the rapidly growing field of attosecond science. The recollision wavepacket is qualitatively described within the strong-field approximation, which commonly assumes tunnelling ionization and plane-wave propagation of the liberated electron in the continuum. However, with increasing experimental sophistication, refinements to this simple model have…

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Direct imaging of rotational wave-packet dynamics of diatomic molecules

We use linearly polarized 45 fs pulses to create rotational wave packets in N2 and O2. We Coulomb explode molecules with a high-intensity circularly polarized pulse and use an ion imaging detector to measure a series of two-dimensional projections of the wave packet’s angular distribution in 27 fs increments. We highlight the evolving wave…

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